Overview
I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Exeter in 2020 where I studied Exercise and Sport Sciences. For my final year dissertation, I planned on investigating potential acute cognitive changes following repeated heading in football. This involved a battery of cognitive test being performed before and after heading a foam football (control condition) and a match quality football (experimental condition). However, due to covid, human testing was postponed prior to the experimental condition. Consequently, my research question was altered to compare cognitive changes following boxing (of which data already existed) to heading a foam football.
I have remained at the University of Exeter to complete a Masters by Research. The project is funded by UEFA, taking a multidisciplinary approach to examine heading in women’s football. While the study employs multiple measures to assess brain health and function my area of interest is cerebrovascular reactivity to CO2 (assessed through breath holding and hyperventilation) and cerebrovascular autoregulation (assessed through repeated squat-stand transitions).
Qualifications
2020 – BSc (Hons) Exercise and Sports Science
Publications
Key publications | Publications by category | Publications by year
Publications by year
2023
Woodgates A (2023). Examining the Regulation of Cerebral Blood Velocity and Postural Control Following Acute Exposure to Heading in Women Footballers.
Abstract:
Examining the Regulation of Cerebral Blood Velocity and Postural Control Following Acute Exposure to Heading in Women Footballers
Background: Repeated heading has been associated with an increased risk of neurodegenerative disease and has been shown to acutely alter cerebrovascular outcomes and postural control. The majority of work investigating heading and these outcomes have utilised heading stimuli which lack ecological validity and recruited almost exclusively males despite suggestions women may suffer greater cerebral white matter alterations following head impacts. This study assessed whether a more ecologically valid heading stimulus alters indices of cerebral blood velocity regulation and postural control in women. Methods: on separate days, nineteen female footballers completed a heading and time-matched non-heading control trial wherein participants remained seated. The heading trial consisted of six headers performed in one hour (one every 10 minutes), with a ball travelling at 40 ± 5 km/h. Cerebrovascular reactivity to hypercapnia and hypocapnia were determined using five repetitions of breath holding and hyperventilation respectively. Dynamic cerebral autoregulation was assessed via analysing the relationship between middle cerebral artery blood velocity and mean arterial pressure during 5 minutes of repeated squat stands performed at 0.05 Hz. Postural control was analysed by the concurrent assessment of objective balance and centre of pressure displacement during double-leg stance. Outcomes were assessed before and one hour after the heading and control trial. Results: No significant time by trial interaction was present for the hypercapnic (P=0.48, ηp2=0.05) or hypocapnic (P=0.47, ηp2=0.06) challenge. Similarly, no interaction effect was present for any metric of dCA (P>0.12, ηp2 0.13 ηp2
Abstract.
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