Author: Laura Sanders / Source: Science News for Students
A career of hard knocks to the head will not necessarily leave pro athletes with serious, permanent brain damage.
That’s the take-home message from a small study. It included pro athletes who had taken a lot of hard hits during their career — including to the head. The findings now challenge what had been suggested by other studies that had autopsied the brains of former college and pro football players.The new data come from tests of 21 retired athletes. All had been football players with New York’s Buffalo Bills or hockey players with the Buffalo Sabres.
Each player allowed researchers to extensively scan his brain. The players also took behavioral tests. From these, the scientists turned up no signs of early dementia or unusual rates of mental decline. Both can point to a brain disease known as CTE. That’s short for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (KRON-ik Traw-MAA-tik En-seff-uh-LAH-puh-thee). Today, doctors diagnose CTE only by looking at a brain after someone has died.
For the new study, University of Buffalo researchers gave the athletes a battery of clinical tests. These measured brain function and mental health. Other tests probed such health features as diet, obesity and history of drug or alcohol use. Findings from these men were then compared to those from 21 noncontact athletes (such as runners and cyclists).
The former hockey and football players had expected bad news. They “were pretty much their own worst critics,” says Barry Willer, an author of the new research. This psychiatrist studies traumatic brain injury at the University of Buffalo in New York. The athletes had believed their brains to be impaired, he notes.
In fact, the new tests did not find high rates of problems with memory, solving problems, decision making or being able to plan things. The researchers also found no evidence…
The post Football and hockey don’t necessarily doom players’ brains to serious damage appeared first on FeedBox.