Hypertension and traumatic brain injuries have both been shown to have significant impacts on cognition and both have proposed mechanisms related to cerebral perfusion and asymptomatic brain pathology, but no research has linked hypertension and traumatic brain injury on neuropsychological functioning. I hypothesized that hypertension status and mild traumatic brain injury history would interact to predict worse cognitive functioning than hypertension or mild traumatic brain injury history alone. A sample of 156 participants was used from a parent study looking at cardiovascular disease and the brain. Multiple regression analyses were implemented to investigate whether the interaction of hypertension status and mild traumatic brain injury history significantly predicted neuropsychological test results controlling for age, sex, race, education, hypertensive medication use, smoking status, alcohol use per week, and depressive symptomatology. Results showed that no significant interactions existed between hypertension and mild traumatic brain injury, but simple effects of hypertension status predicted Trail Making Test B time and Grooved Pegboard Dominant Hand time. It is possible that mild traumatic brain injury status does not interact with hypertension status, or that methodological issues with the study interfered with significant relations. Future studies should investigate if more severe head injuries or if the full range of blood pressure impacts cognitive functioning
