Paola Malerba, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University and Principal Investigator at the Center for Biobehavioral Health at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She applied for a Spark Award to support her project “Neurophysiological Sleep Correlates of Cognitive Difficulties After Concussion.”
“The overall goal of my project is to understand how sleep relates to cognitive and emotional difficulties in adolescents with persistent post-concussion symptoms,” says Malerba. “Missed connections between sleep quality and recovery may contribute to ongoing challenges for these patients.”
This cross-sectional study compares adolescents with persistent post-concussion symptoms to healthy controls. Participants completed a 90-minute nap with EEG recording, along with self-reported and objective assessments of sleep, cognition and emotion regulation. Data collection, funded by a 2020 neurology pilot grant, concluded in 2024 and the team is now analyzing sleep EEG using advanced methods developed in the Malerba group. The next step is to statistically evaluate relationships and group differences emerging in the dataset.
The Spark Award will support statistical analyses for three aims:
- Determine the link between sleep quality, mood and cognition in adolescents with persistent symptoms
- Examine differences in sleep rhythm coordination between concussion and control groups
- Explore correlations between sleep oscillations and cognitive or emotional outcomes
Funding will enable collaboration with a statistician from BRANCH to ensure high-quality analyses of data from 60 participants, including 41 who completed sleep EEG. These analyses will establish differences in sleep and cognitive variables between groups and explore relationships between sleep and psychological measures, including covariates. The resulting publication will strengthen the team’s research line and support future grant applications.
Congratulations to Paola on receiving a Spark Award and using it to advance research on concussion recovery.
Julie Johnson, PharmD, is the Director and Principal Investigator at The Ohio State University Clinical and Translational Science Institute.