‘Absolutely a big deal’: Vancouver Island students get paper published in prestigious medical journal

A group of private school students from Vancouver Island has managed to get a peer-reviewed research paper published in Scientific Reports – an honour usually reserved for medical professionals.

Derek Harrison is among the students from Brentwood College School, located in the community of Mill Bay, who are named on the paper.

“It is incredibly unusual,” said Harrison, who graduated in 2021. “We were initially trying to find if hitting your head during normal sport, repetitively, could add up to something like a concussion.”

Their research found the answer to that question is yes.

Using a brain scanner called NeuroCatch, students from grades 10, 11 and 12 measured the brains of school athletes involved in contact sports. They then compared scans done on members of the school’s rowing, climbing and tennis teams.

The students then took their research one step further, comparing their findings between male and female athletes.

“The big difference that was highly significant was that female athletes had larger brain responses than the males,” said Dr. Ryan D’Arcy, a neuroscientist with NeuroCatch. “It also means they may have more vulnerabilities to concussive impacts.”

D’Arcy invented the NeuroCatch platform, and worked with the students on their research. He says being published in a scientific publication is often reserved to research professionals working in hospitals or universities.

“It’s absolutely a big deal,” said D’Arcy. “When we go to our doctors and we wonder how they are getting access to the latest advances in medicine, they get those from scientific journals that publish scientific studies to tell them how things are advancing in medicine.”

Now a new generation of Brentwood College School students is working to further that research.

That includes Grade 11 student Nana Li, who is part of a group working to find out more about the long-term effects of concussions.

“We want to know if sub-concussive impacts can have a long-lasting damage,” said Li.

They are also researching whether the brain is capable of healing if someone steps away from contact sports over the summer break.

“Throughout time and after their recovery, they can heal their brains and get back to their baseline function like at the start of the term,” said Jayden Ng, a Grade 12 student at the school.

Those students hope to replicate their predecessor’s success by getting their finding published in a scientific journal as well.

“I’m very enthusiastic about their work because the next major step is the check, does this actually last?” said Harrison.

Harrison is now studying neuroscience at the University College London in the U.K. He is hoping to turn his high school experience into a career.

“I want to stay towards the frontier and continue contributing, building on the skills I started at Brentwood and brought through my university career,” said Harrison.