Persistent implicit motor learning alterations following a mild traumatic brain injury sustained during late adulthood.

Introduction

The neurocognitive outcomes of sustaining a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) during late adulthood are vastly understudied. In young, asymptomatic adults, mTBI-related synaptic plasticity alterations have been associated with persistent implicit motor sequence learning impairments outlasting the usual cognitive recovery period. The current study examined whether uncomplicated mTBI sustained during late adulthood could exert persistent deleterious consequences on implicit motor sequence learning.Method: Thirty participants (aged 50-70 years) who experienced an uncomplicated mTBI within 3 to 24 months of testing, and 40 age-, sex- and education-equivalent healthy controls performed an implicit serial reaction time task (SRT task). The SRT task consisted of 10 blocks of a repeating sequence embedded among 4 random blocks. Participants also completed a battery of standardized neuropsychological tests of attention, memory and executive functioning.

Results

While both mTBI participants and controls showed significant implicit motor sequence learning effects, the mTBI group achieved a lower level of competence at performing the SRT task as evidenced by smaller gains in reaction times across the 10 training blocks of the repeating sequence. The time elapsed since the injury was unrelated to implicit motor learning effects. There was no evidence of a persistent effect of mTBI on any neuropsychological domain compared to controls.

Conclusions

Findings from this study suggest that a single mTBI sustained during older age may have persistent repercussions on training-dependent motor sequence learning capacity outlasting the recovery of mTBI symptoms and gold-standard neuropsychological tests performance.