Effect of Physical and Academic Stress on Illness and Injury in Division 1 College Football Players.

Stress-injury models of health suggest that athletes experience more physical injuries during times of high stress. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of increased physical and academic stress on injury restrictions for athletes (n = 101) on a division I college football team. Weeks of the season were categorized into 3 levels: high physical stress (HPS) (i.e., preseason), high academic stress (HAS) (i.e., weeks with regularly scheduled examinations such as midterms, finals, and week before Thanksgiving break), and low academic stress (LAS) (i.e., regular season without regularly scheduled academic examinations). During each week, we recorded whether a player had an injury restriction, thereby creating a longitudinal binary outcome. The data were analyzed using a hierarchical logistic regression model to properly account for the dependency induced by the repeated observations over time within each subject. Significance for regression models was accepted at p ≤ 0.05. We found that the odds of an injury restriction during training camp (HPS) were the greatest compared with weeks of HAS (odds ratio [OR] = 2.05, p = 0.0003) and LAS (OR = 3.65, p < 0.001). However, the odds of an injury restriction during weeks of HAS were nearly twice as high as during weeks of LAS (OR = 1.78, p = 0.0088). Moreover, the difference in injury rates reported in all athletes during weeks of HPS and weeks of HAS disappeared when considering only athletes that regularly played in games (OR = 1.13, p = 0.75) suggesting that HAS may affect athletes that play to an even greater extent than HPS. Coaches should be aware of both types of stressors and consider carefully the types of training methods imposed during times of HAS when injuries are most likely.

Functional and structural indices of empathy: Evidence for self-orientation as a neuropsychological foundation of empathy.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a model that hypothesizes that empathy is associated with decreased right parietal lobe (RPL)-related self-orientation (i.e., increased selflessness), which allows individuals to more easily empathize with others. PARTICIPANTS: Thirty one individuals with documented neuroradiological abnormalities due to traumatic brain injury (TBI) referred for clinical evaluations. MEASURES: Cerebral integrity was measured with both functional (i.e., neuropsychological tests) and structural indices (i.e., MRI). Participants were administered comprehensive neuropsychological tests associated with general bilateral frontal, temporal, and parietal lobe functioning, a self-report measure of empathy (i.e., Penner's Prosocial Personality Battery), and an objective measure of empathy (i.e., Prisoner's Dilemma). Twenty participants also completed structural MRI analysis of the bilateral frontal, temporal, parietal, and insular cortices measured in terms of volume. RESULTS: Pearson correlations indicated that empathy was related to increased neuropsychological indices of RPL and frontal lobe (primarily left frontal) functioning. The only MRI indices associated with empathy were the bilateral insula. Neither functional nor structural cerebral indices were significantly related to objective measures of empathy. CONCLUSIONS: Contrary to hypotheses, empathy appears to be associated with increased RPL functioning. It is suggested that to incorporate the experiences of others into the experience of the self (i.e., to be empathetic), one must have an intact sense of the self.