Depressive symptoms and white matter dysfunction in retired NFL players with concussion history.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To determine whether correlates of white matter integrity can provide general as well as specific insight into the chronic effects of head injury coupled with depression symptom expression in professional football players.

Method

We studied 26 retired National Football League (NFL) athletes who underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scanning. Depressive symptom severity was measured using the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) including affective, cognitive, and somatic subfactor scores (Buckley 3-factor model). Fractional anisotropy (FA) maps were processed using tract-based spatial statistics from FSL. Correlations between FA and BDI-II scores were assessed using both voxel-wise and region of interest (ROI) techniques, with ROIs that corresponded to white ma

SUBMITTER: Strain J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3770203 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature