Athletes' Brains Reveal Concussion Damage

jamie found a story on research about what concussions do to athletes, with the insights coming mostly from the study of the donated brains of dead athletes. The NFL has the biggest profile in the piece, but other sports make an appearance too. Turns out that repeated concussions can result in depression, insomnia, and the beginnings of something that looks a lot like Alzheimer's. "The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone," said [retired wrestler] Nowinski. "We know we can't do that anymore. This causes long-term damage."

Comments

It's not that surprising

[Anonymous Cowbell]

I remember an ESPN interview of a retired NFL linebacker. He'd had multiple concussions in his playing days. He was quite mentally damaged, at the ripe old age of 45.

One day he went out for a drive, and when he got to his block, he couldn't recognize his own house. So he decided to just keep driving around the block, over and over. More than an hour elapsed before one of his family members spotted the car out the front window and went outside and flagged him down.

It wasn't the first time seemingly simple things/memories just completely escaped him

Re:If this is true...

[je ne sais quoi]

The answer is marketing. A highly visible sports program does seem to increase the visibility of the school and in response, the school gets a bigger pool of student applications and can choose better students out of that pool. But I agree that the idea that we have these "athlete scholars" is usually a farce, their is a double-standard for athletes and universities do whatever they can to ignore huge problems with athletes cheating, etc. The universities really need to stop spending so much money on their athletic programs and worry about their core missions, which are education and research, which does NOT include entertainment.

As for TFA, for us sedentary desk-jockeys, we think of "exercise" as healthy, but anyone who has played a sport in some sort of serious way has probably noticed that athletics at this level is not healthy, it's damaging to the body, it doesn't surprise me that the brain is no exception. I played competitive ultimate frisbee on a regular basis for several years and I was beginning to get knee trouble. Looking at the health problems some of the older players had was enough to make me quit. I'd much rather still be able to walk when I'm 50 thank you.