Thomas G. Burns

• Psy.D.
• Dierctor of Neuropsychology / Chief of Psychology Section at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

Penetrating traumatic brain injury (TBI) is uncommon in infancy. The consequences may be devastating, especially when the injury is extensive and affects eloquent areas of the brain. There is the potential for neuropsychological dysfunction that may impact the individual’s development and well-being into adulthood. In the context of early brain inj...

Donna L. Murdaugh, Tricia Z. King, Binjian Sun, Richard A. Jones, Kim E. Ono, Andrew Reisner, AND Thomas G. Burns doi: 10.1017/S1355617718000413. Published online by Cambridge University Press on 24 August 2018. The paper by Murdaugh et al. (2018) contains an error on page 781 that should be brought to the attention of readers. It is listed here, a...

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate alterations in functional connectivity, white matter integrity, and cognitive abilities due to sports-related concussion (SRC) in adolescents using a prospective longitudinal design. Methods: We assessed male high school football players (ages 14-18) with (n=16) and without (n=12) SRC using co...

There is increased necessity to focus research on school-aged athletes with sports-related concussion (SRC). This study assessed differences in symptom reporting and neurocognitive performance in youth athletes who sustained a sports-related concussion. A total of 1345 concussed and 3529 nonconcussed athletes (ages 8-21) completed the Immediate Pos...

Objective: To determine the relationship between sleep quantity and sleep disturbances on symptoms and neurocognitive ability at the acute phase (<7 days) and post-sports-related concussion (SRC; >21 days). Design: Prospective inception cohort study SETTING: General community setting of regional middle and high schools. Participants: Sample in...

The hippocampus (HC) has traditionally been thought of as the center of episodic and declarative memory, however some research has suggested a role for the HC in cognition more broadly. One proposed mechanism is by modulating other brain regions by using memory to guide new learning, reasoning, and decision making1. More specifically, past work has...

Background and purpose: Declines in both functional activation and functional connectivity have been reported in patients with sickle cell disease. In this study, we derived the functional and default mode responses to a word stem paradigm in age-, ethnicity-, and background-matched subjects with sickle cell disease and control groups, with the ai...

Objective: To evaluate the potential impact of a concussion management education program on community-practicing pediatricians. Study design: We prospectively surveyed 210 pediatricians before and 18 months after participation in an evidence-based, concussion education program. Pediatricians were part of a network of 38 clinically integrated pra...

The objective of this study was to assess cognitive performance and behavioral symptoms in a sample of children diagnosed with partial epilepsy who were seizure controlled on AED monotherapy for one year. Ninety-eight seizure-controlled children on AED monotherapy were included in this study. Specific AEDs examined included topiramate, divalproex s...

Adolescents and young adults with surgically treated congenital heart disease (CHD) have been shown to exhibit difficulties with executive functions; however, the neural underpinnings of these impairments have not been previously examined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The current study employed fMRI to examine the neural mechan...

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a permanent motor disorder that appears in early age and it requires multiple tests to assess the physical and mental capabilities of the patients. Current medical record data collection systems, e.g., EPIC, employed for CP are very general, difficult to navigate, and prone to errors. The data cannot easily be extracted which...

Background: To date, few studies have delineated clear sex-based differences in symptom resolution after a sports-related concussion (SRC), and equivocal results have been identified in sex-based differences on baseline assessments. Purpose: To assess whether female athletes displayed prolonged recovery and more symptoms at baseline and after an...

White matter disruptions have been identified in individuals with congenital heart disease (CHD). However, no specific theory-driven relationships between microstructural white matter disruptions and cognition have been established in CHD. We conducted a two-part study. First, we identified significant differences in fractional anisotropy (FA) of e...

Pediatric epilepsies are associated with psychiatric and behavioral comorbidities that greatly increase disease burden for both patients and their families. In this report, we identify the multiple potential causes contributing to comorbidities including biologic factors associated with epilepsy/epilepsy syndrome, the effects of family dynamics, as...

Changes from the fourth edition of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) to the fifth edition are discussed, with particular emphasis on how the electronic administration facilitated assessment. The hierarchical organization and conceptualization of primary indices have been adjusted, based on recent theory and research on the constru...

Cognitive regression is a well-described presentation of vein of Galen aneurysmal malformations (VGAMs) in childhood. However, it remains unclear whether successful treatment of the malformation can reverse cognitive regression. Here, the authors present the case of a 5-year-old girl with a VGAM that was treated with staged endovascular embolizatio...

In 2010, the American Academy of Pediatrics officially adopted the recommended return to play guidelines proposed by the International Conference on Concussion in Sport. The guidelines include a six-step process that provides structure to guide an athlete who is recovering from a concussion in a gradual return to play (RTP) by allowing participatio...

Children diagnosed with cerebral palsy (CP) appear to be at high risk for developing neurobehavioral and motor disorders. The most common disorders for these children are impaired visual-perception skills and motor planning. Besides, they often have impaired executive functions, which can contribute to problematic emotional adjustment such as depre...

Concussion research generally centers on physical challenges, though aspects such as social functioning and returning to school also warrant attention in pediatric populations. Restoring academic performance postconcussion remains a challenge. Here we provide recommendations addressing a uniform policy for pediatric concussion patients in academic...

A group of 47 patients diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders were compared to 47 age-, gender-, and racially matched typically developing children to examine the frequency of impairment across domains of the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL). The MSEL is a comprehensive measure of cognitive functioning designed to assess infants and pres...

Task-induced deactivation (TID) potentially reflects the interactions between the default mode and task specific networks, which are assumed to be age dependent. The study of the age association of such interactions provides insight about the maturation of neural networks, and lays out the groundwork for evaluating abnormal development of neural ne...

Background and purpose: Ischemic injury to the brain is a common complication of SCA. To better understand the neurologic impact of SCA, TBSS were applied to DTI data to investigate white matter injuries in pediatric patients with SCA. Materials and methods: TBSS comparisons of a range of anisotropy and diffusion measures were carried out betwee...

Although research on adults with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) has increased in recent years, delays in frontal lobe development preclude the generalization of these findings to children. This study compared children with FLE with typically developing children on cognitive and executive tests. Additionally, the differences between children with early...

Cerebral palsy is a heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental brain disorders resulting in motor and posture impairments often associated with cognitive, sensorial, and behavioural disturbances. Hypoxic-ischaemic injury, long considered the most frequent causative factor, accounts for fewer than 10% of cases, whereas a growing body of evidence sugg...

Children with epilepsy are at risk of suboptimal adaptive functioning. Research has not yet established how specific seizure and treatment variables may affect adaptive functioning, which would allow clinicians to better identify at-risk children. This study sought to determine the seizure and treatment variables predictive of adaptive functioning....

The intracarotid amobarbital procedure (IAP) is routinely conducted as part of the presurgical evaluation of pediatric patients with epilepsy. The aim of the present study was to investigate the possibility that anesthetization failures are the result of interactions of carbonic anhydrase-inhibiting (CAI) medications with sodium amobarbital. An arc...

A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted examining the higher order factor structure of the WISC-IV scores for 344 children who participated in neuropsychological evaluations at a large children's hospital. The WISC-IV factor structure mirrored that of the standardization sample. The second order general intelligence factor (g) accounted for th...

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a chronic disease with a significant rate of neurological complications in the first decade of life. In this retrospective study, cortical thickness was examined in children with SCD who had no detectable abnormalities on conventional magnetic resonance imaging/magnetic resonance angiography. Regional differences in cor...

Traumatic Brain Injury: Efficacy of Rehabilitation and Need for Further Evidence-Based Research - Rehabilitation for Traumatic Brain Injury, HighWalter M.Jr., SanderAngelle M., StruchenMargaret A., and HartKaren A. (Eds.). 2005. New York: Oxford University Press, 368 pp., $90.00 (HB) - Volume 14 Issue 6 - Thomas G. Burns

Past research has found that children with epilepsy exhibit decreased memory skills. In addition, some studies have found that children with epilepsy obtain significantly lower IQ scores than controls. In an effort to examine whether children with epilepsy have specific memory weaknesses versus global cognitive difficulties, the present study compa...

Research findings regarding the effects of childhood epilepsy on general intelligence have produced variable results. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of epilepsy, age of seizure onset, and Antiepileptic Drugs (AED) on intellectual ability as assessed by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, 3rd Edition (WISC-III; Wechsl...

Two strategies for surgical management are used for infants with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), primary heart transplantation and the Norwood procedure. We sought to determine how these 2 surgical approaches influence neurodevelopmental outcomes at school age. A multicenter, cross-sectional study of neurodevelopmental outcomes among school...

Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) is a congenital disorder of neuronal migration that is increasingly recognized as a common cause of seizures in children, occurring in 20-30% of all surgically treated cases of epilepsy in the pediatric population. Advances in neuroimaging have contributed to recognition of FCD. We report 15 children (9 female, 6 male...

To determine whether a single injection of intravenous secretin results in measurable improvements in socialization and/or communication skills in children with autism. Sixty subjects with autism were randomly selected and assigned to either treatment or placebo group. Subjects in the treatment group received 2.0 clinical units of secretin per kilo...