iANAM: The Ability to Visualize Headache, Sleep Disturbance, and mTBI
Abstract
The current proposal will clearly address the topic area of Sleep Disorders. Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), also commonly known as concussion, is intimately connected to poor sleep, headache, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. A person that has experienced mTBI may have been at greater risk because he or she was dealing with these associated conditions beforehand. Further, development of such related conditions commonly happens after mTBI, even if it was not something the injured person was dealing with prior to the mTBI. The risks of these conditions may be higher for military personnel than civilians. The extent of the costs to families and the military are still unknown. It has been suggested that the related costs and disability for military personnel and their families is equal to, or potentially higher than, civilian estimates. This may lead to even greater consequences when deployed or re-deployed. One major issue for caregivers and patients is the access to services. Sometimes this means traveling large distances, navigating hospitals, and waiting for doctors. We plan to develop and validate a platform that will allow for remote assessments of patients cognitive (or thinking) abilities where they receive a computerized assessment of their attention and concentration. Each of the aforementioned conditions can make it difficult to concentrate or even remember things. To measure the impact of blast injuries and mTBI on military personnel, the military worked with university scientists to develop a set of computerized tests (the automated neuropsychological assessment metrics, ANAM) that can measure cognitive abilities. Military Service Members receive this test prior to deployment, and it can be used after mTBI by medical personnel to decide whether or not the military service member can return to duty. It is one of the best-researched computerized tests of cognitive abilities available with many strengths compared to other tests. The difficult aspect of computerized tests such as the ANAM is that it can only show changes in cognitive abilities for a week or less after mTBI, even though research has shown that it takes the brain longer than a week to heal from a brain injury. Also, a Service Member may obtain a poor attention score because their sleep has been disrupted after mTBI, but their mTBI has healed. Currently, the ANAM cannot differentiate the exact reason for a poor score, only that a Service Member is not at their optimal thinking ability level. A new tool scientists are using to better measure the various ways a person moves their eyes or looks at something is called eye-tracking. Eye movements have been shown to change as a result of poor sleep, headache, anxiety, and depression. Also, there are many well-documented changes to eye-movements after mTBI. Eye-tracking can also give us an idea of how hard a person is thinking, and how hard they are trying. Like the ANAM, eye-tracking has been shown to be another way to assess thinking abilities such as attention. Researchers are finding that cognitive tests (that measure different thinking abilities) combined with eye-tracking can provide unique information to better understand a person’s thinking abilities, and how those abilities may change after mTBI or if he or she is sleepy. The military has recently called for more exploration of eye-tracking, and many researchers are using this tool either by itself or with tools like ANAM and comparing the results. To our knowledge, we are the first research group to propose developing a fully integrated ANAM and eye-tracking tool, or iANAM. The iANAM will be able to simultaneously capture how eyes move while taking the ANAM. This will help with understanding “how” a person completed a test to obtain a particular score, as there is more than one way to obtain the same test score. The current ANAM cannot measure the different “hows” each person may use. Eye-tracking methods are also capa
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Dec 05, 2021
- Source ID
- W81XWH2110200
Entities
People
- Tyler C Duffield
Organizations
- Oregon Health & Science University
- United States Army