Event-Related Brain Potentials Depict Cognitive Disturbances in Children with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) is a common cause of short-term cognitive disturbances in children that rarelyare related to objective neurophysiological markers. With the aim of correlating cognitive processing withevent-related brain potential variation, visual Continuous Performance Tests (CPT) were administered to 15children with MTBI and a matched control group. All the patients had suffered post-traumatic loss of consciousnesslasting less than 15 minutes, and they were evaluated within 5-to-15 days post-trauma. A few additionalneuropsychological tests were also administered to both groups. Behavioral results showed that the injured childrenachieved poorer scores for phonological and verbal fluency tasks and no interference effect in a computerizedversion of the Stroop test. They had fewer correct responses on CPT-AX, where a warning signal preceded targets.The N90, P240 and P390 ERP components varied significantly between groups while performing CPT-AX. Presentfindings could be interpreted as reflecting disturbances that impede injured children from using contextualinformation efficiently. The higher amplitude of the slow late positivity observed in the control group might reflectupdating memory preparatory processes that could increase subsequent cognitive operational competence. The ERPassessment could be helpful to demonstrate early neurophysiological disturbances subsequent to a MTBI inchildren.