Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Symposium
The Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Symposium (mTBI Symposium) is an annual event that brings together researchers and clinicians to learn about the latest discoveries in and care for brain injury.
mTBI Symposium 2022
The mTBI Symposium 2022 was held in conjunction with OHSU's Research Week, on Tuesday, May 3, 2 - 5 p.m., and featured short talks and a keynote address. Watch the recording.
Agenda
2 p.m. Welcome
Erick Gallun, Ph.D.
Professor, Otolaryngology, OHSU
2:10 Do Subjective and Objective Measures of Function Change Similarly in People with Persistent Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Symptoms?
Kody Campbell, Ph.D.
Post Doctoral Researcher, Balance Disorders Lab, OHSU
2:23 Auditory Difficulties Following Concussion: Initial Findings from the Concussion Symptom Subtype Inventory
Tess Koerner, Ph.D., Au.D.
Research Investigator, National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research
2:36 Early Transfusion with Mesenchymal Stem Cell Derived Extracellular Vesicles: A New Transfusion Strategy for Life-Threatening Hemorrhage and Traumatic Brain Injury
Simone Dekker, M.D., Ph.D.
Resident, Internal Medicine, OHSU
2:49 Exercise intolerance after mild traumatic brain injury: the role of heart rate, symptom provocation and rehabilitation
Maggie Stojak, B.S.
Graduate Student, Balance Disorders Lab, OHSU
3:02 Focal subcortical white matter injury and corresponding behavioral deficits in a rodent model
Hung Nguyen, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, OHSU
3:15 Clinical implementation of virtual reality for visual motion sensitivity in a patient with mTBI: A case study report
MacKenzie Root, P.T., D.P.T., N.C.S.
Physical Therapist, OHSU
3:28 Attitudes and behaviors of athletic trainers toward exercise following sport related concussion
Emily M. Kosderka, Ph.D., A.T.C.
Associate Director of Sports Medicine, Portland State Athletics
3:41 Conclusion and future directions
Jim Chesnutt, M.D.
Associate Professor, Family Medicine, OHSU
3:55 Break
4 Hearing, concussion and sound processing in the brain
Nina Kraus, Ph.D.
Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences, Neurobiology and Otolaryngology
Northwestern University
Introduction by Erick Gallun, Ph.D.
4:45 Questions and Answers
5 Conclude

Nina Kraus, Ph.D., presented a virtual keynote address from 4 - 5 p.m. Watch the recording (beginning at 1:52:00).
Hearing, Concussion and Sound Processing in the Brain
Making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs we ask our brains to do. With millisecond precision, the auditory system must not only encode important sound ingredients, but also assign meaning. In her award-winning book, OF SOUND MIND: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World, Dr. Nina Kraus examines the important partnership between sound and the brain, showing that auditory processing drives many of the brain’s core functions and leaves a fundamental imprint on who we are as human beings.
A hurting brain can disrupt this intricate and delicate listening process. Through her NIH-funded longitudinal study examining the effects of sports-related concussion and participation in contact and collision sports in Big 10 collegiate student-athletes and children, her group, Brainvolts, has shown that a concussion can harm the hearing brain. Even a mild traumatic brain injury can disrupt the auditory system’s ability to encode sound and understanding in noise.
The sounds and activities of our lives shape our brains, for better and for worse. Brainvolts’ scientific approach can help us improve concussion diagnosis, ensure player safety and build a healthier sonic world.
Dr. Kraus is Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences, Neurobiology, and Otolaryngology at Northwestern University. As a biologist and amateur musician she thinks about sound and brain health.
Her research has found that our lives in sound, for better (musicians, bilinguals) and for worse (concussion, hearing loss, language disorders, noise), shape how our brain makes sense of the sounds we hear. Her book OF SOUND MIND - How our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World, was written for the intellectually curious.
Kraus advocates for biologically informed choices in education, health, and society. See www.brainvolts.northwestern.edu for more information.
The mTBI Symposium 2021 was held as a virtual set of short talks in conjunction with OHSU's Research Week, May 3-6, 2021.
Presentations included:
- Post-traumatic pain in children and adolescents following critical care hospitalization: prevalence and association with recovery
- Quantifying the relationship between subjective and objective vestibular and oculomotor system function in people with subacute mild traumatic brain injury
- Chronic cognitive deficits after mild traumatic brain injury: Do standard clinical tests relate to real world deficits?
- Balance deficits by domain on the mini balance evaluation systems test following mild traumatic brain injury
- Auditory processing after mild Traumatic Brain Injury
- Development of an auditory symptom-rating scale for concussion
- Exploring age and gender patterns for care after concussion; a retrospective analysis
- Photosensitivity: a window into pain in the brain
- Objective indices of preattentive auditory discrimination in blast-exposed Veterans
Below you will find agendas for our past annual events:

Contact us
Kate Stout
Program Coordinator
(503) 494 0885
James C. Chesnutt, M.D.
Associate Professor, Family Medicine, OHSU