Research That Matters Brain Recovery and Preparedness in Adolescents using Imaging after a Rugby season (Brain-RePAIR) update by Josh McGeown, PhD., Senior Research Fellow, Honorary Research Fellow, Anatomy & Medical Imaging, University of Auckland, Neurological Foundation First Fellowship In March 2026, the BrainRePAIR study entered its third year. This project is aimed at making the game safer by using instrumented mouthguards and advanced brain scans to study how repetitive head impacts and concussion affect brain health, but more importantly, by understanding how the brain recovers after injury. This project is jointly supported by NZRF, Hugh Green Foundation, and Neurological Foundation and is a collaborative effort between scientists across New Zealand. A major goal of the study is to identify how long the standdown times and the off-season should be to allow the brain to heal after a concussion or season of rugby, respectively. In 2026, the Brain-RePAIR team will focus on analysing the large dataset collected from adolescent schoolboy players in Gisborne, while continuing to build the adolescent schoolgirl dataset in Dunedin. Brain-RePAIR Preliminary Findings Brain injury can affect multiple parts of the brain at the same time, and the areas affected can vary widely from person to person. A focus of the Brain-RePAIR study is to identify ways of combining different brain scan measurements – structure, function, and wiring – to better understand and visualise these complex patterns. The plots above provide an example comparison between a typical control participant (left) and an athlete who suffered a concussion (mTBI) one week before their scan (right). The coloured outer edge of each graph represents the average values observed in the healthy control group. A larger, rounder shaded area generally reflects a brain that is more “typical” of the control group, while a smaller or more uneven (“jagged”) shape indicates greater differences from the control group across one or more brain measurements. The dashed circle marks a level where values start to deviate more strongly from the control group. By summarising these measurements into an individualised brain profile, this approach may help us track how the brain changes after concussion and throughout recovery and ultimately improve stand down times and safe return-to-play decisions. 14 ANNUAL REPORT 2025
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