This study sought to determine if there is a relationship between a history of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and symptoms related to cognitive dysfunction (CD) and sleep impairments (SI) in the medical student population.

Studies have described numerous symptoms resulting from TBI.  Two symptoms that have been shown to result from TBI are CD and SI.  To our knowledge, no studies have ever examined the relationship between TBI, CD, and SI in a medical student population.

Medical students from Rock Vista College of Osteopathic Medicine were invited to complete a survey that assessed a past history of TBI, and current symptoms related to CD and SI.  The history of TBI was examined using validated survey questions from the OSU TBI Identification Method (Corrigan & Bogner, 2007; Gardner et al., 2024). CD symptoms were assessed using questions from the Quality of Life in Neurological Disorders Item Bank (Plessow et al., 2020).  SI was measured with the Insomnia Severity Index (Bastien et al., 2001).

A total of 100 medical students completed all survey questions.  Analyses revealed a significant correlation between TBI and CD scores (r=0.344, p<0.01), as well as a correlation between CD and SI (r=0.454, p<0.01). Interestingly, there was no correlation between TBI and SI overall measures. However, analyses did reveal a significant correlation (r=0.245, p<0.015) between SI and one of the TBI questions, “In your lifetime, have you ever injured your head or neck in a car accident or from crashing some other moving vehicle?”

To our knowledge this is one of the first studies demonstrating a relationship between TBI events and CD in medical students.  Follow up studies will determine if there are other predictive correlates of TBI events.