Dr. Jaclyn Caccese and Felipe Yamaguchi went to the 2019 AAN Sports Concussion Conference in Indianapolis, IN.
Jaclyn presented her poster titled “Age of first exposure to soccer heading and sensory reweighting for upright stance”. She saw no differences in sensory processing for upright stance, suggesting that soccer heading during early adolescence is not associated with balance deficits in college-aged soccer players, notwithstanding potential
deficits in other markers of neurological function.
Felipe debuted and presented his first poster titled “Repetitive head impact exposure and sensory reweighting for upright stance”. He saw that individuals exposed to high repetitive head impact (RHI) exposure may rely less on vestibular reweighting and more on visual feedback to maintain balance during upright
stance. Routine soccer heading is associated with relatively high head accelerations; soccer
players with high-RHI may rely less on vestibular reweighting because of the frequently
unreliable nature of vestibular feedback.
Congrats Jackie and Felipe!