Concussions May Damage Areas Of The Brain Related To Memory

Concussions May Damage Areas Of The Brain Related To Memory.
Concussions may injury areas of the perceptiveness related to memory in National Football League players. And that expense might linger long after the players leave the sport, according to a small study. "We're hoping that our findings are common to further inform the game," Dr Jennifer Coughlin, an second professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said in a university hearsay release. "That may mean individuals are able to make more educated decisions about whether they're reachable to brain injury, advise how helmets are structured or inform guidelines for the encounter to better protect players".

A Higher Risk For Neurological Deficits After Football

A Higher Risk For Neurological Deficits After Football.
As football fans make provision to pore over the 49th Super Bowl this Sunday, a new on suggests that boys who start playing tackle football before the age of 12 may face a higher jeopardize for neurological deficits as adults. The concern stems from an assessment of current remembrance and thinking skills among 42 former National Football League players, now between the ages of 40 and 69. Half the players had started playing face football at age 11 or younger. The bottom line: Regardless of their going round age or total years playing football, NFL players who were that offspring when they first played the game scored notably worse on all measures than those who started playing at seniority 12 or later.

So "It is very important that we err on the side of advise and not over-interpret these findings," said study co-author Robert Stern, a professor of neurology, neurosurgery, anatomy and neurobiology at Boston University's School of Medicine. "This is just one experiment with study that had as its target former NFL players. So we can't generalize from this to anyone else. "At the same time this bone up provides a little bit of evidence that starting to hit your head before the age of 12 over and over again may have long-term ramifications.

So the the third degree is, if we know that there's a time in childhood where the young, vulnerable brain is developing so actively, do we board care of it, or do we expose our kids to hit after hit after hit?" Stern, who is also the director of the Alzheimer's Disease Center Clinical Core and supervisor of clinical research at the Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center at the university, reported the findings with his colleagues in the Jan 28, 2015 pour of Neurology. The den authors pointed out that, on average, children who play football between the ages of 9 and 12 face between 240 and 585 head hits per season, with a weight that is comparable to that experienced by high school and college players.

In 2011, investigators recruited preceding NFL players to participate in an ongoing study called DETECT. The players' normal age was 52, and all had played at least two years in the NFL and 12 years of "organized football". All had continual a comparable number of concussions throughout their careers. All had a minimum six-month account of mental health complaints, including problems with thinking clearly, behavior and mood. All underwent a standardized battery of neurological testing to assess learning, reading and literal capacities, as well as reminiscence and planning skills.

Frequent Brain Concussion Can Lead To Suicide

Frequent Brain Concussion Can Lead To Suicide.
When ci-devant National Football League big name linebacker Junior Seau killed himself last year, he had a catastrophic mastermind disorder probably brought on by repeated hits to the head, the US National Institutes of Health has concluded. The NIH scientists who conscious Seau's brain constant that he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). They told the Associated Press on Thursday that the cellular changes they dictum were similar to those found in autopsies of people "with exposure to repetitive head injuries".

The fight - characterized by impulsivity, depression and erratic behavior - is only diagnosed after death. Seau, 43, who played pro football for 20 seasons before his retirement in 2009, discharge himself in the strongbox last May 2012. His family donated his brain for research.

Some experts shadowy - but can't prove - that CTE led to Seau's suicide. "Chronic painful encephalopathy is the thing we have typically seen in a lot of the athletes," said Dr Howard Derman, commandant at the Methodist Concussion Center in Houston. "Rather than say 'this caused this,' I dream the observation is that there have been multiple pro football players now who have committed suicide: Dave Duerson, Andre Waters, John Grimsley - although Grimsley was just reported as a gun accident".

Some say that these players became depressed once they were out of the limelight or because of marital or economic difficulties, but Derman thinks the evidence goes beyond that."Yes, all that may be accepted on - but it still remains that the majority of these players who have committed suicide do have changes of chronic disturbing encephalopathy. We feel that that is also playing a role in their mental state".

But, Derman cautioned, "I can't for instance that chronic traumatic encephalopathy causes players to commit suicide". Chronic harmful encephalopathy was first noticed in boxers who suffered blows to the head over many years. In late years, concerns about CTE have led high school and college programs to circumscribe hits to the head, and the National Football League prohibits helmet-to-helmet hits.

Blows To The Head Lead To Vision Loss

Blows To The Head Lead To Vision Loss.
As more enquire focuses on the mar concussions can cause, scientists now report that even mild blows to the talent might affect memory and thinking. In this latest study, special helmets were used on football and ice hockey players during their seasons of play. None of the players were diagnosed with a concussion during the meditate on period, but the remarkable helmets recorded key data whenever the players received milder blows to the head. "The accelerometers in the helmets allowed us to include and quantify the intensity and frequency of impacts," said read author Dr Tom McAllister.

And "We thought it might fruit in some interesting insights". The researchers found that the extent of change in the brain's white matter was greater in those who performed worse than expected on tests of reminiscence and learning. White matter transports messages between sundry parts of the brain. "This suggests that concussion is not the only thing we need to pay prominence to," said McAllister, chairman of the department of psychiatry at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

So "These athletes didn't have a concussion diagnosis in the year we calculated them and there is a subsample of them who are perhaps more defenceless to impact. We need to learn more about how long these changes last and whether the changes are permanent". The over was published online Dec 11, 2003 in the journal Neurology. Concussions are submissive traumatic brain injuries that occur from a sudden blow to the head or body.

Most NFL Players Have A Poor Vocabulary

Most NFL Players Have A Poor Vocabulary.
In a Lilliputian analysis of former NFL players, about one quarter were found to have "mild cognitive impairment," or problems with contemplative and memory, a rate slightly higher than expected in the general population. Thirty-four ex-NFL players took bid goodbye in the study that looked at their mental function, depression symptoms and brain images and compared them with those of men who did not gambol professional or college football. The most common deficits seen were difficulties determination words and poor verbal memory.

Twenty players had no symptoms of impairment. One such performer was Daryl Johnston, who played 11 seasons as fullback for the Dallas Cowboys. During his gifted career as an offensive blocker, Johnston took countless hits to the head. After he retired in 2000, he wanted to be proactive about his perspicacity health, he told university staff.

All but two of the ex-players had sagacious at least one concussion, and the average number of concussions was four. The players were between 41 and 79 years old. The cramming was published online Jan 7, 2013 in the JAMA Neurology. The trend study provides clues into the brain changes that could direction to these deficits among NFL athletes, and why they show up so many years after the head injury, said study originator Dr John Hart Jr, medical science director of the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Hart and his colleagues did advanced MRI-based imaging on 26 of the retired NFL players along with 26 of the other participants, and found that old players had more expense to their brain's white matter. White business lies on the inside of the brain and connects different gray matter regions. "The price can occur from head injuries because the brain is shaken or twisted, and that stretches the white matter".

An dexterous on sports concussion is familiar with the findings. "The most important finding is that the researchers were able to find the correlation between pale matter changes and cognitive deficits," said Kevin Guskiewicz, founding helmsman of the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Football And Short-Term Brain Damage

Football And Short-Term Brain Damage.
Children who put on football in waist school don't appear to have any noticeable short-term brain damage from repeated hits to the head, supplementary research suggests. However, one doctor with expertise in pediatric brain injuries expressed some concerns about the study, saying its everyday size made it hard to draw definitive conclusions. The office included 22 children, ages 11 to 13, who played a season of football. The mature comprised 27 practices and nine games. During that time, more than 6000 "head impacts" were recorded.

They were almost identical in force and location to those experienced by high school and college players, but happened less often, the researchers found. "The pure difference between head impacts efficient by middle school and high school football players is the number of impacts, not the arm of the impacts," said lead researcher Thayne Munce, associate director of the Sanford Sports Science Institute in Sioux Falls, SD. A time of football did not seem to clinically weaken the brain function of middle school football players, even among those who got hit in the head harder and more often.

And "These findings are encouraging for young football players and their parents, though the long-term effects of teen football participation on brain health are still unknown. The report was published online recently in the list Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. For the study, players wore sensors in their helmets that premeditated the frequency of hits to the head, their location and force.