The influence of motivation on neurocognitive performance long after mild traumatic brain injury

Motivation and the presence of mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) were cros sed to determine whether individuals with MTBI could overcome attention def icits many years after injury. Contrary to prediction, university students with self-reported MTBI (average time since injury = 6.4 years) performed n o differently from controls on a short but demanding set of neurocognitive tasks. As predicted, however, motivation differentially affected these grou ps by elevating controls' performance while leaving the MTBI group's perfor mance unaffected. This finding was mainly due to individuals with more than one MTBI. These results suggest that university students who have sustaine d more than one MTBI may demonstrate subtle, longterm neurocognitive impair ment. Additionally, motivation may be an important variable to consider in MTBI research, (C) 2000 Academic Press.