Neuropsychological test performance in former college and professional American football players
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Repetitive head impacts from American football have been associated with long‐term cognitive symptoms. The late neuropsychological profiles of this population is not well‐characterized. Research has relied on retrospective informant reports and/or has been small samples of former professional players. We describe objective neuropsychological test performance in former college and professional American football players. Methods Male (45‐74 years) former National Football League (n=107) and college football players (n=59) from the DIAGNOSE‐CTE Research Project completed a neuropsychological test battery, Functional Activities Questionnaire (FAQ) and Quick Dementia Rating Scale (QDRS). Neuropsychological test scores were converted to T‐scores using age, sex, and/or education‐adjusted normative data. T‐scores<35 defined impairment. Participants were enrolled across the spectrum of symptom severity (asymptomatic to dementia). Individuals without decisional capacity were excluded. Participants with missing data (n=4) and who scored <45 on Test of Memory Malingering Trial 2 (n=10) were excluded. Results 108 (65.1%) identified as White and 53 (31.9%) as Black. Mean education years was 16.76 (SD=1.48). Fourteen (8.4%) and 6 (3.6%) reported diagnostic history of ADHD and learning disability, respectively. Average Montreal Cognitive Assessment score was 24.96 (SD=3.17); 85 (51.2%) scored <26. Impairment rates were highest for learning and episodic memory. On Neuropsychological Assessment Battery List Learning, 29.5% were impaired on Immediate recall, 36.1% on Short Delay, and 44.0% on Long Delay Recall. Impairment rates for Craft Story Immediate and Delayed Recall (Paraphrase) were 15.7% and 18.7%, respectively. 19.9% and 15.7% were impaired on learning and delayed recall of the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test‐Revised. Impairments were frequent on the Multilingual Naming Test (20.5%), Trail Making Test Parts B (19.3%) and A (18.1%), Animal Fluency (15.7%), and Number Span Backward (15.1%). Impairments were less common (<10%) for phonemic fluency, planning, basic attention, and visual‐perceptual abilities, Mean FAQ was 3.11 (SD=5.14); 23 (13.9%) had an FAQ >9. Based on QDRS scores, 66 (39.8%) had mild cognitive impairment, 44 (26.5%) mild dementia, and 6 (3.6%) moderate dementia. Conclusions In these former American football players, neuropsychological impairments were most frequent in episodic memory, followed by confrontation naming and executive function. Further research is needed to delineate this population’s unique neuropsychological profile.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".