The Effect of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) on Cognitive Performance in a Sample of Active Duty U.S. Military Service Members

Abstract

Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is considered a signature injury from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the year 2000, over 370,000 U.S. active duty service members have been diagnosed with TBI. Although prior research has shown that even mild forms of TBI are associated with impaired cognitive performance, it is not clear which facets of cognition (computation, memory, reasoning, etc.) are impacted by injury. Method: In the present study, we compared active duty military volunteers (n = 88) with and without TBI on six measures of cognition using the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metric software. Results: Healthy volunteers exhibited significantly faster response times on the matching-to-sample, mathematical processing, and second round of simple reaction time tasks and had higher throughput scores on the mathematical processing and the second round of the simple reaction time tasks (P < 0.05). Conclusion: In this population, cognitive impairments associated with TBI influenced performance requiring working memory and basic neural processing (speed/efficiency).