HJBR Jul/Aug 2024

20 JUL / AUG 2024 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE important brain area, impairments in this region due to concussive or subconcussive head impacts may be transient in nature. Thus, at preseason baseline, there were no discernible differences in functional con- nectivity in the DLPFC between football players and control athletes. Limitations This study has limitations. While this is one of the largest neuroimaging studies of adolescent football players, more racial and ethnic diversity would be ideal. A lack of objective measures of history of head impact exposure and severities of head impacts is a limitation. The current study using a multimodal neuroimaging approach has provided a foundational basis that can be leveraged in a future longitudinal study, yet correlations betweenmorphological and physiological changes should be investi- gated further. Additionally, it is imperative to integrate other neurological variables, such as psychometric assessments, blood biomarkers, and functional assessments, to holistically understand the relationships between head impact exposure and brain health in adolescent athletes. CONCLUSION Our data derived from advanced neu- roimaging techniques suggest that adoles- cent football players had reduced cortical thickness in fronto-occipital regions and increased thickness in the cingulate cor- tex, alongside deepened sulcal depth and altered gyrification in widespread regions. Football players also exhibited a lower density of neural activity and coherence of