{"id":400960,"date":"2023-12-27T04:27:20","date_gmt":"2023-12-27T09:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/a-high-tech-mouthguard-that-might-help-prevent-concussions\/"},"modified":"2023-12-27T04:44:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-27T09:44:00","slug":"a-high-tech-mouthguard-that-might-help-prevent-concussions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/a-high-tech-mouthguard-that-might-help-prevent-concussions\/","title":{"rendered":"A high-tech mouthguard that might help prevent concussions","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"gutenbergContent__content--109b03a769a11e8ae3acbab352a64269 html_0\">\n<p>When athletes or soldiers have a concussion, the most beneficial course of action is to simply get them off the playing field or out of the action so they can recover. Yet much about head injuries remains a mystery, including the reasons why some impacts result in concussion while others don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>But new measuring devices are being developed that could help deliver a wealth of information about head impacts. By giving an immediate warning that a person needs to be removed from action or play, they could help protect soldiers and athletes alike from brain damage.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<aside aria-label=\"Related Story - A brain implant changed her life. Then it was removed against her will.\" class=\"related__wrap alignleft\"><\/aside>\n<div>\n<div class=\"gutenbergContent__content--109b03a769a11e8ae3acbab352a64269 html_3\">\n<p>Appreciation of the real risks of head injuries has been a long time coming. \u201cEven 10 years ago, if someone took a big hit they were told to get up and play or keep going,\u201d says Mike Shogren, CEO of Prevent Biometrics. \u201cNow reducing major head impacts and understanding concussion risk is a major focus in sports and the military.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Prevent is one of several companies developing new sensors to precisely measure and record head impacts, which would help identify possible concussions and provide data for studies of cumulative effects.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have been trying to measure the forces involved in head trauma for a long time, says Adam Bartsch, the company\u2019s chief science officer. \u201cDecades ago, scientists had to use Rube Goldberg contraptions to study head impact,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes these were made from a dental mold with a rigid plate and sensors bigger than dice, with a 10-meter-long cable connecting it to a computer. The wearer would drool and the data wasn\u2019t perfect, but it was the best they had.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>First conceived at the Cleveland Clinic, Prevent\u2019s device, the Impact Monitoring Mouthguard (IMM), fits into the wearer\u2019s mouth, working as both a monitoring tool and a functional mouthguard. It calculates the force, location, direction, and number of impacts and can then transmit data via Bluetooth to other devices for assessment.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Prevent is using the IMM to study parachute landing falls (or PLFs), a landing technique that was developed by the United States Army as part of its paratrooper training program, using over 2,000 paratroopers as subjects. A correctly executed PLF absorbs the shock of hitting the ground as the parachutist lands feet first and falls sideways, successively distributing the landing shock along the calves, thighs, hips, and back. But an error can whip the parachutist\u2019s head backwards and onto the ground. The IMM\u2019s sensors revealed that this occurs far more often than anyone realized.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/a-high-tech-mouthguard-that-might-help-prevent-concussions.png\" alt=\"a product family shot showing the IMM charging case, mouthguard, mobile app on phone, web data portal on laptop and the solo charging case\" class=\"wp-image-1085431\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"image-credit\">PREVENT BIOMETRICS<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<p>\u201cWe found a significant head impact in about 5% of jumps,\u201d says Bartsch. \u201cThat\u2019s about 30 times as much as the published incidence of concussion in paratroopers.\u201d A battery of tests confirmed that the events the mouthguard registered as possibly causing concussions had in fact done so. Paratroopers tend to just get up and carry on after a bad landing, so the official figures had previously reflected only the injuries of those who were physically unable to get up on their own.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In sports, similarly, athletes are often encouraged to \u201cget over it\u201d rather than report an injury. Prevent is carrying out <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/preventbiometrics.com\/2023\/10\/09\/world-rugby-integrates-smart-mouthguard-technology-to-the-head-injury-assessment-as-part-of-new-phase-of-global-player-welfare-measures\/\">a large-scale project with World Rugby<\/a>, which will monitor players and allow coaches to take injured players off the field and have them assessed. (Several other instrumented mouthguards\u2014the Biocore, the ORB, and HitIQ\u2014are being developed for other sports, including boxing and lacrosse.) In the future, Prevent hopes to be able to evaluate the total effect of lots of smaller shocks to see under what circumstances they cause serious cumulative injury. \u201cUnderstanding total exposure on top of just major impacts is also critical,\u201d Shogren says. \u201cIt\u2019s like in a boxing match. The impact that knocks you out at the end might not have knocked you out on its own in the first round.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><em>David Hambling is a technology journalist based in South London.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<ul class=\"plato-post-bottom-links\">\n<li class=\"plato-post-bottom-link-amplifi\">SEO Powered Content &amp; PR Distribution. <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amplifipr.com\">Get Amplified Today.<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"plato-post-bottom-link-platodata-network\">PlatoData.Network Vertical Generative Ai. 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Biotech and Clinical Trials Intelligence. <a href=\"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Access Here.<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"plato-post-bottom-link-source\"><span>Source:<\/span> <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2023\/12\/27\/1084613\/mouthguard-concussion-traumatic-brain-injury-sports-military\/\">https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2023\/12\/27\/1084613\/mouthguard-concussion-traumatic-brain-injury-sports-military\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When athletes or soldiers have a concussion, the most beneficial course of action is to simply get them off the playing field or out of the action so they can recover. Yet much about head injuries remains a mystery, including the reasons why some impacts result in concussion while others don\u2019t. But new measuring devices [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":2,"featured_media":400963,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"acf":[],"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"link","format":"url"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400962,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400960\/revisions\/400962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}