Effects of Different Header Types on Neurocognitive and Vestibular Performance in Youth Soccer Players
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: Repetitive head impacts due to heading in soccer may bear the potential to induce brain changes. To investigate how brain development is affected by heading, effects of heading exposure on neurocognitive and vestibular performance in adolescent soccer players were prospectively examined. METHODS: In this longitudinal cohort study, male and female high-level youth soccer players of different ages were enrolled in two seasons. Age-matched athletes of other ball sports were included as controls. Before and after each season, neurocognitive performance (six domain scores), vestibulo-ocular reflex, dynamic visual acuity, and postural control (sway velocity) were objectively assessed in all athletes. Every soccer training and match during the observation period was videotaped to analyze individual heading exposure. Associations between heading frequency (total, in duels, >20-m flight distance) and pre- to post-changes were investigated via the Spearman correlation. RESULTS: A total of 103 soccer and 51 control athletes (9-19 yr) participated. Neurocognitive scores and sway velocity significantly improved in each season in soccer and control athletes. There were no associations between total heading numbers and changes in any parameter. Over the first season, the more headers played in duels ( r = -0.255; 95% confidence interval (CI), -0.474 to -0.006; P = 0.04) and from >20-m distance ( r = -0.299; 95% CI, -0.510 to -0.055; P = 0.02), the less psychomotor speed improvement occurred. In the second season, improvements in reaction time were significantly smaller with higher numbers of headers played in duels ( r = 0.375; 95% CI, 0.043 to 0.632; P = 0.02) and from >20-m distance ( r = 0.359; 95% CI, 0.025 to 0.621; P = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: Potential high-impact headers may have affected neurocognitive improvements, exhibiting small to moderate effects. Therefore, more high-impact headers may be more important to consider than solely the overall heading exposure in discussions about adverse effects in youth soccer.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
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".