Author: Laura Sanders / Source: Science News
A career of hard hits to the head doesn’t inevitably lead to brain decline, a small study of former football and hockey pros suggests.
The results counter a specter raised by other studies on pro football players’ brains after death.The new findings come from extensive brain scans and behavioral tests of 21 retired athletes — football players from New York’s Buffalo Bills and hockey players from the Buffalo Sabres. In a series of papers published August 7 in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, researchers report finding no signs among the athletes of early dementia or mental slipping. Those symptoms are early hallmarks of the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which can be diagnosed by a brain examination only after death.
Such studies involving living subjects “are exactly what we really need,” says cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist Carrie Esopenko of Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. “They are really going to help us understand what’s going on in these lives, rather than what’s happening when they’re dead.”
Using a battery of clinical tests, researchers at the University at Buffalo measured brain function and mental health, while also investigating other aspects of the ex-players’ health, such as diet, body mass index and history of drug and alcohol use. The team then compared the results with the same measures taken for 21 noncontact athletes, including runners and cyclists.
Participating football players and hockey players expected bad news. They “were pretty much their own worst critics,” believing themselves to be impaired,…
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