What is it about?
Concussion can affect how young people think and how tired they feel, but these changes may not follow the same recovery process. We compared adolescents with a concussion to those with an orthopedic injury, such as an injury to an arm or leg, shortly after injury and again four weeks later. At 72 hours, adolescents with a concussion performed worse on some measures of thinking skills and reported greater fatigue. Most of these differences were no longer present four weeks later.
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Why is it important?
Youth may experience both cognitive difficulties and fatigue in the first days after a concussion, and our findings suggest that both tend to improve substantially during the first month of recovery. However, feeling fatigued was not associated with poorer performance on objective cognitive tests. This distinction is important: an adolescent who feels mentally tired may not necessarily perform poorly on cognitive testing, and vice versa. Assessing both fatigue and cognitive function may therefore provide a more complete picture of recovery after concussion.
Perspectives
Objective cognitive testing tells us how an adolescent performs on specific tasks, while reported fatigue and cognitive symptoms tell us how they experience their recovery in everyday life. Considering these measures separately may help researchers and clinicians better understand the different dimensions of concussion recovery.
Veronik Sicard
Universite Laval
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Longitudinal assessment of fluid cognitive function and cognitive fatigue in adolescents with concussion and orthopedic injury: A Pediatric Assessment of Rest and Exertion (PedCARE) study., Neuropsychology, August 2026, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/neu0001113.
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