Hello, and welcome to my blog! My name is Radhika Balagopal, and I am excited to have this platform to share the latest concussion research, as well as raise awareness of mTBI in sports.
As a sports enthusiast and a former D1 soccer player, I was no stranger to seeing concussions and repetitive head impacts (RHI’s) in sports. Here is my background.
- My paper, “Heading-Related Slowing by Twenty-Four Hours in Youth Athletes,” is published in the Journal of Neurotrauma. The paper is based on a study I undertook on my high school soccer team over 2 seasons in 2013.
- Research intern at the Stanford Concussion and Brain Performance Center assisting in eye-tracking.
- Research Assistant at UCSB working with UCSB D1 athletes, athletic trainers and the Stanford Concussion and Brain Performance Center on the eye tracking study at USCB.
- Intern at Stanford Medicine assisting the methodologist on the data extraction of a large body of literature to evaluate for concussion subtypes.
- Sports concussion specialist at Club Sports UCSB, performing baseline/followup concussion tests on intercollegiate athletes. Creating concussion guidelines for Club Sports and work with athletes in Goleta/ UCSB community on concussion awareness and prevention.
As an athlete, I realized that most coaches, players, and parents were not fully aware of the long term effects of repetitively heading a soccer ball. Coaches have no objective way to judge if a player needed to sit out after a high impact collision or header. This is why I am passionate about raising awareness at the basic level about the seriousness of RHI’s.