WHO ARE WE?

A group of clinicians, scientists, engineers, former rugby players and activists centred in the Department of Neurology at St James’s hospital and Trinity College Dublin; dedicated to detecting, assessing and preventing brain injury in contact sports.

WHAT IS OUR MISSION?

To provide state-of-the-art clinical care and research aimed at understanding the consequences of concussion (mild traumatic brain injury-mTBI) in contact sports. This is with a view to generating evidence based guidelines that will assist in determination of severity of injury, rehabilitation requirements, back to play protocols and prognosis for future injury risk.

Download the report from the

Concussion: A National Direction event.

THE CRIG RESEARCH PROGRAMME AT TCD

The Concussion Research Interest Group (CRIG) at Trinity College Dublin aims to develop a world class research programme using active and retired contact sports men and women.

All research subjects will undergo a highly sophisticated free assessment which takes about 3.5 hours in total and will be performed in the state of the art Welcome Trust/Health Research Board Clinical Research Facility (CRF) on the St James’s Campus. Each assessment will include:

1. High-resolution state-of-the-art 3-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) including Functional MRI.
2. Neurocognitive assessment of processing speed, memory, attention, executive function and language of the patient presenting.
3. Analysis of ocular Microtremor and Visual eyetracking pre and post concussion.
4. Analysis of retinal vein tortuosity/aberrant vascular patterning.
5. Analysis of blood levels of products of blood brain barrier disruption pre and post concussive brain injury such as.
6. Analysis of DNA samples to understand genetic susceptibility to brain injury following all ethical guidelines in relation to genetic screening.
7. Rehabilitation and prognostic assessment and physiotherapy or occupational therapy as required.