Objective 1: Auditory Evoked Potentials - Sport, Sound And The Brain: Do Contact Sports Leave A Lasting Impact?

This study extends current research on auditory processing and neural speech representation in the context of sport-related head impacts by focusing on older retired athletes aged 60–80 years. While most existing work has concentrated on younger active players, less is known about whether subtle neural changes linked to participation in contact sports persist or evolve into later life. This gap is critical given that decades of exposure to repetitive, often sub-concussive impacts may accumulate across a playing career. Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) will be recorded using EEG while participants listen to speech in both quiet and noisy conditions. Analyses will explore cortical (N100) and subcortical (frequency-following response; FFR F0) components to provide a comprehensive view of auditory pathway function. Older adults with a history of playing contact sports will be compared with age- and fitness-matched non-contact controls who have never experienced head-impact exposure, allowing clearer isolation of sport-related neural differences. By investigating auditory processing in this older retired cohort, the study aims to determine whether previously reported auditory neural differences observed in younger contact athletes remain evident, diminish, or intensify with aging. The findings will provide timely insight into the cumulative effects of contact-sport participation on brain health and auditory function across the adult lifespan. Following previous work (Andrew et al., submitted) which identified a selective cortical vulnerability in younger adult athletes during quiet listening, this study investigates whether these deficits persist into older age. Given that subcortical FFR-F0 remained stable in the younger cohort, the current study explores whether ageing and cumulative impact exposure eventually lead to a ‘spreading’ of neural dysfunction to the midbrain, or if the deficit remains localised to the auditory cortex.