Literature Review

English 1101

Chase Gray

Jamie Dunham

28 March, 2021

I’ve witnessed a lot of sport related head injuries in my lifetime and I’ve also seen how

they can impact a person’s life as well. One of my best friends growing up in highschool had

multiple concussions in his first 3 years of playing highschool soccer, and they had to tell him

that he wasn’t allowed to play contact sports anymore. I saw how it impacted him meantally and

physically. I’m very glad the doctors let him run track the next year because I saw how happy he

was back in the sports world. I realized that this happens to so many kids every year and how

lucky I am to be able to play the sports I want to. Because of these reasons, I decided I wanted to

research the physiology of certain head injuries and their effects on the human body.

In my first article, I decided to narrow my search to a specific sport: basketball. Even

though, statistically, this sport is one of the lowest in concussion rates just because there aren’t

many head injuries, I wanted to see what happens to the rest of the body when a concussion is

introduced. I found a lot of useful information about how the body is affected by a concussion,

especially your skeletal and muscular systems. Even though this was a good source, it may not

be as helpful because it was measured with NBA players injuries, not younger teenagers.

My second source comes from across the world in the Republic of Ireland. This report is

taken from a neurological perspective, meaning that it comes from someone that studies the brain

and has done procedures on it. I felt like this source would be fitting because it goes in depth to
the brain and its physiology. It will help me be able to understand and explain the brain’s

physiology in my research paper.

My third source is another source about concussions in sports. Instead of in a specific

sport, it generalizes the anatomy of the brain and it talks about what happens to all the parts of

the brain after a concussion occurs. This is very helpful to understand as the brain is the most

important group of organs in the human body and is also the most affected by head injuries.

Also, being the head of so many important systems in the body, like the nervous system, there is

a certain draw to studying the brain because there is so much to learn about.

My fourth source is more of a visual source than anything else. There is some

information in it but it isn't anything the other sources have in them. There are a lot of graphs in

this article that measure a lot of different variables’ relation to each other. The most useful one is

a nomogram about how different variables affect how bad a concussion can be and how much it

would take to upscale the concussion to a contusion. I am not quite sure how I am going to

implement these graphs into my research paper, but it is really good information I would like to

implement in my paper.

My fifth and final source is about head injuries in children. It references also how

concussions and head trauma can affect someone's cognitive growth. This source is the most

useful out of the five because it is very closely related to my research question. It has all of the

elements I want to cover in my paper, so it is likely the majority of my information comes from

this source. It is pretty lengthy, but after skimming through it, I found a load of useful

information. I feel like the more I read into the source, the more I will find about my topic so I

believe this is my best source.

 The last thing I would like to say is all the things I learned from this literature review.

Aside from all of the locations and functions of all the parts of the brain, coincidentally I am

already learning that in physio and anatomy, I learned how important the brain is. I learned that it

is connected to almost everything in the human body, so it is fair when doctors limit your sports

after a certain number of concussions. After a certain amount it becomes dangerous to risk

another concussion that could critically injure a part of your brain.

 Citations:

Jildeh, Toufic R., et al. “Concussion Is Associated With Increased Odds of Acute Lower-

Extremity Musculoskeletal Injury Among National Basketball Association Players.”

Arthroscopy, Sports Medicine, and Rehabilitation, vol. 3, no. 1, Feb. 2021, pp. e219–e225.

EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.asmr.2020.09.014.

O’Halloran, Philip J., et al. “Sports & Exercise Related Traumatic Brain Injury in the

Republic of Ireland – The Neurosurgical Perspective.” Journal of Clinical Neuroscience, vol. 81,

Nov. 2020, pp. 416–420. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.jocn.2020.10.015.

Tremblay, Sara, et al. “A Review of the Effects of Physical Activity and Sports Concussion on

Brain Function and Anatomy.” International Journal of Psychophysiology, vol. 132, no. Part A, Oct.

2018, pp. 167–175. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2017.09.005.

Tunthanathip, Thara, et al. “Clinical Nomogram Predicting Intracranial Injury in

Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury.” Journal of Pediatric Neurosciences, vol. 15, no. 4, Oct. 2020,

pp. 409–415. EBSCOhost, doi:10.4103/JPN.JPN_11_20.

Veliz, Philip, et al. “Head, Neck, and Traumatic Brain Injury Among Children Involved

in Sports: Results From the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.” Journal of

Adolescent Health, vol. 68, no. 2, Feb. 2021, pp. 414–418. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.06.004.