Health eMinutes

If Your Child is the Next Brett Favre ...


If your child is an active participant in sports, listen up. A new kind of neurocognitive testing has been developed that could prove invaluable when treating a young athlete after a concussion.

Research has demonstrated that neurocognitive testing is a cornerstone of proper post-injury care and contributes significantly to the understanding of recovery following a concussion. ImPACT™ is the neurocognitive assessment used by North Memorial. Developed at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, it is a software tool used to evaluate multiple aspects of neurocognitive function, including memory, attention, brain processing speed, reaction time and post-concussion symptoms.

Here's how it works:

With parental permission, an athlete participates in a 30-minute computer-based assessment to develop his or her baseline neurocognitive report.

The report will be saved for one year in North Memorial's database. (It's recommended that young athletes be screened every year due to the unique cognitive development of adolescents.) In the event that an athlete sustains a concussion, the baseline report can be made available to any school or health care professional who participates in that individual's care and recovery.

Ideally, the assessment would be administered a second time (post-injury) with the results compared to the first assessment to help determine the presence and extent of any neurocognitive deficits.

It is important to point out that an assessment conducted after an injury can still provide valuable treatment and recovery information even if an athlete never participated in a baseline assessment.

North Memorial and the Institute for Athletic Medicine are working with local high schools to offer this assessment. If you'd like more information about concussions or wish to schedule an assessment for your child, please contact Jason Cardosi, speech-language pathologist, at (763) 520-7374.