‘It’s like taking your brain to the gym’
Photo courtesy of Jamie Morrison.
UVic’s Christie Laboratory is taking an innovative approach to researching concussions and traumatic brain injuries (TBI) through partnerships with the Victoria Brain Injury Society (VBIS) and a 3D video game, NeuroTracker.
Run by Dr. Brian Christie, neuroscientist and professor in the Division of Medical Sciences, students and postdocs in the Concussion Lab use NeuroTracker to study people with concussions and TBIs, using a 3D object-tracking task to assess the visual and cognitive perception of participants.
“It was originally developed to improve sport performance,” Taylor Snowden, a PhD candidate in Neuroscience at UVic, told the Martlet. “But then the lab was working with a professional hockey team and noticed a group of athletes who could not do the task — they were really struggling — and it turned out that those were athletes who had recently had concussions.”
“It’s like taking your brain to the gym,” she said.
Snowden explained that she has always been interested in exploring how the brain recovers from brain injuries, having family experience with TBI. While on the swim team in her undergrad, Snowden saw a sign calling for volunteers outside the Concussion Lab. Volunteering transitioned into an Honours thesis, and then into graduate research.
Beyond student projects and their other research, including Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fragile X Syndrome, the lab runs the Vancouver Island Concussion Project, which brings in community members with or without concussions to get a baseline assessment.
“Having a concussion puts someone at a nearly two times increased risk of dementia later on in life,” Snowden said, “[but] there’s things that we can do that are really healthy for our brain and reduce our risk.”
“We’re trying to see if [NeuroTracker] can help reduce that risk in these adults who have had concussions years in the past,” she added.
NeuroTracker is also what led to the lab’s partnership with VBIS.
Jamie Morrison, a UVic Biology alumnus and Neuroscience Master’s student, also has family experience with TBI, which led her to volunteer with VBIS during her undergrad, and to taking some directed studies courses with Snowden. Morrison is now continuing this research as a graduate student.
One of Morrison’s undergraduate projects involved implementing NeuroTracker in the community with a program called ‘Train Your Brain,’ which has been running at VBIS since October 2022. “We’ve enrolled over 150 individuals for over 1 500 cognitive training appointments,” Morrison told the Martlet.
“It’s been really great to see how we can actually make a real difference in our community,” she added.
While the media primarily focuses on sports-related TBIs, there are a number of other circumstances that can lead to brain injuries. “In our general population [the group] experiencing concussions the most is people with intimate partner violence, people experiencing car accidents, [or] our grandparents who are sustaining falls,” Snowden explained that more people experience concussions from intimate partner violence than sports in Canada, but “ it’s not something that people talk about.”
The Ending Violence Association of BC estimates that intimate partner violence causes over 290 000 concussions annually among women, girls, and gender diverse people in Canada. The website notes that “for every 1 NHL concussion, it is estimated that more than 7 000 women suffer the same injury by an intimate partner.”
Christie, Snowden, and Morrison recently presented their innovative research at the II FloripaNeuro International Neuroscience Congress in Florianópolis, Brazil.
From April 2 to 4, the Concussion Lab will also be hosting the 2025 Brain Health Summit — a “comprehensive symposium dedicated to in-depth exploration and dissemination of knowledge surrounding the six pillars of brain health” — in Sidney.
Snowden mentioned that at the summit, “students have an opportunity to share their research” if it relates to brain health.“We have speakers from all over Canada coming to talk about brain health.”
Snowden and Morrison emphasized how thankful they are to Christie for being such a supportive supervisor and providing them with so many opportunities. They also expressed their thanks to the Victoria Brain Injury Society for being a great community partner.
When asked what success in this research area looks like to them, Snowden explained that “[brain injuries are] something that is so common, so if we can help one person, that is the best measure of success.”
