Rehabilitation of Visual Attention Following mTBI

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is one of the most commonly sustained combat-related injuries. Complaints of poor attention often follow mTBI and can become chronic in some individuals. Chronic attention complaints have traditionally been treated with cognitive rehabilitation by speech pathologists. Recent research has shown that computerized programs may add additional value either independently or in conjunction with traditional therapies. Researchers at UC Riverside have already completed research showing that vision training, using the ULTIMEYES program that they created, led to improved vision both on standard assessments, such as reading eye-charts, and in real world skills, such as reading and playing baseball. This program is designed to broadly improve basic aspects of vision, such as visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, as well as high-level vision, such as attention. Furthermore, an associated memory training task (Recall The Game) shows improvements in memory tasks and transfer to skills such as fluid intelligence.

The objective of this proposal is to evaluate the effectiveness of rehabilitation for visual attention deficits in U.S. military service members across three programs:

1. Visual Attention and Memory Program (UCR Games)
2. Cognitive and Psychological Based Rehabilitation (Speech Pathologist-Directed Therapy)
3. General Cognitive Rehabilitation Games (Lumosity [2])

The investigators hope to gain a better understanding of the unique and cumulative influence of different cognitive rehabilitation programs on improving attention complaints in mTBI. This proposal contains both retrospective and prospective components.

The retrospective component consists of examining archival data from Lumosity, previously collected as part of routine clinical care. The data contain pre- and post-assessments of post-concussive symptoms, symptom frequency, and cognitive testing. The investigators expect that data analysis will reveal evidence of improvement in severity of post-concussive symptoms, in frequency of troublesome cognitive problems, and in performance on neuropsychological tests when pre- and post-assessments are compared.