Slashdot Mirror
What Happens To a Football Player's Neurons?
An anonymous reader writes "It seems like every week there's a new story about the consequences of all those concussions experienced by football players and other athletes — just a few days ago, the NY Times reported that some athletes diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease may actually have a neural disease brought on by head trauma. But missing in these stories is an explanation of what head trauma actually does to the brain cells. Now Carl Zimmer has filled in the gap with a column that takes a look at how neurons respond to stress, and explains how stretching a neuron's axon turns its internal structure into 'mush.'"
call the mush-heads.
.........I didn't know athletes/footballers had neurons.
News flash: that big chunk of grey matter inside of our head is *fragile*. ORLY?
Yet there are people who argue that football is a game based on sophisticated strategies, that anyone able to play it proficiently must have an intelligence on the higher outliers of genius.
Now it seems that "mushy" neurons are good enough...
footballers have neurons???
They still have more sex than all slashdotters combined.
This thread is worthless without pics!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So, you have to be really dumb to use steroids. The prosecution rests.
This is all just a conspiracy by the liberal media to destroy an American pasttime. There's still no REAL proof that football causes any blane dibblage.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
What they need neurons for?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
That Lou Gehrig died from Lou Gehrig's disease.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Certainly there also has to be some damage done by banging heads on keyboards for years...
Just to point, we are talking about American Football, not Football. It's not the same.
http://twitter.com/bash_history
The number of replies to this story seems to indicate that perhaps a vast majority of slashdotters don't particularly like football players. I was actually hoping for some technical insight and whatnot, but it would seem everybody is still maintaining the same attitude they had in high school.
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
An effeminate version of rugby.
The October 2009 issue of GQ had a major article about this. Click to read it here.
I found the article actually pretty fascinating, but it is a bit of a narrative about this particular doctor's quest to bring his research into the public eye.
Also, who knew GQ had such a fantastic catalog of their back-issues? I think I might have to read their stuff more often. I know it's very un-slashdot of me, but whatever.
I take it that you have inspected the reproductive organs on many professional athletes using steroids and found them somewhat deficient?
After all, they don't worry about what happens to geeks' muscles.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I remember seeing an article very recently (on Slashdot maybe) that pointed out that boxing got more dangerous when they started using padded gloves, because that let the boxers hit with all their strength. Take away the football helmets and pads and you might get more contusions and cuts, but less brain damage; it would be more like rugby with the players hitting each other much more softly.
You know, between the blatant flamboyant homosexuality, the 6 seconds of running with 10 minutes of talking, the constant stopping and commercials, what happens to my neurons when watching this boring, hoakey pseudo-sport?
[troll]
The vast majority of the damage caused by sports is actually found in the brains of those who mindlessly consume Natty Light (etc.) while sitting around the 80" television they bought at the local Rent N Pay.
[/troll]
Didn't rtfa or even tfs, but I've got your answer right here: Whatever.
I was expecting a study along these lines "Violent sports make you dumber."
I was not very disappointed.
So, this explains the US Cxx class and all their wonderful and logical decisions.
Doesn't this assume that they had neurons to begin with?
What were the odds that a guy called Lou Gehrig would contract Lou Gehrig's Disease? The irony!
You refer to "athletes". I suspect you made the same mistake as me. This "news" story does not refer to footballers, it actually refers to those that partake in "American Football", please do not confuse them with athletes that play real football!
David Beckham never had any significant amount of neurons to damage in the first place!
The New Yorker had an excellent article about this recently: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
Don't be so quick to credit the lack of comments to American Football's popularity on slashdot - though the topic of professional sports is not usually the most popular topic amongst a group of self described "nerds".
I credit the lack of comments to the fact that the horrible permanent injuries, physical and mental, accrued by the people playing the game (aka the "heroes" or the "stars", as they are usually referred to in popular American culture) makes them, in fact, victims. Admittedly it is hard to call a person who has earned millions of dollars a "victim", but they are - just as much as someone who receives millions of dollars as the result of a crippling car accident. And many (read: most) of them don't earn nearly that much money, but still accumulate lifetime injuries over a relatively short career.
These players almost never understand the long term repercussions of the sport. Of course even if they did, many would play in spite of the dangers, just as people smoke cigarettes despite decades of evidence indicating the damage caused to the body...but the dangers should at least be publicly acknowledged.
The objective in boxing is to cause sufficient brain trauma to your opponent that he loses consciousness or can no longer stand up. That's not a sport, that's barbarism, and has no business in a civilized society. the short term, it's highly dangerous, and in the long term it can turn you into what's left of Muhammad Ali.
By contrast, wrestling is a real sport, in spite of the fact that professional boxing is for real and professional wrestling is as much fake showmanship as sport. (And yes, just because it's fake doesn't mean than any of those guys can't throw my ass out of the ring, and look good doing it.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Say what you like about the intelligence of (or money made by) American Football players, nobody makes videos like THIS about our guys =P
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
The description of axons returning to normal appearance but being in a fragile state internally could explain second concussion syndrome.
I know in baseball there is generally a growing recognition that a concussion calls for mandatory rest afterward. Research to determine how much rest is needed would be very useful, right now they have to guess and hope it's enough. A good diagnostic tool might be even better.
The term football for hundreds of years has been used to refer to many games that were "played on foot" as opposed to on horseback or some other means. "American Football" definitely gets a claim on that. Every bit as much as soccer (properly known as "Association Football").
Read, learn... (if you can)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football
Head trauma
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I did a GIS for "steroids shrunken deformed testes scrotums" and found nothing.
Can we assume this is first hand knowledge? First or second person?
It's no wonder Brett Favre can't decide whether he wants to retire or not!
Neurons, I mean?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
n/t
Oh lots of us love football, it's just we don't get American Football. We prefer the version where players use their feet to kick the ball.
Many of us think American Football might be rugby but with more padding because Americans are scared of getting hurt. Or perhaps they are more sensible and like their teeth and unbroken bones or other such faint excuses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Official_portrait_of_Barack_Obama.jpg
I can't say for sure, but I think this is a picture of Barry Bonds' nut sack.
he also had to compare with at least a sample of 100 non-athletes
Well this being an American site, it makes sense to call it just football since that's what it's called here.
I am a former lineman/college football player with a motor neuron disease, and long time nerd and slashdot reader. (That is surely a rare and perhaps unique combination one would think).
I find this study and the response quite interesting as you can imagine.
The phenotype of my disease tracks Calpain deficient limb girdle muscular dystrophy and to a lesser extent polymyositis. Yet doctors (including several at NIH) have never been able to make a definitive diagnosis. For example, repeated biopsies did not show dystrophic changes in the muscle and new genetic tests for Calpain deficiency were negative. This does not rule out that I have either or both diseases but the new study is very interesting given my football history.
I have been trying to figure out from the article and a Real Sports story whether all of the known players had a phenotype consistent with ALS (eg death in 2-4 years). I don't really track with ALS, not the least of which because I have had serious disease for more than a decade and I should live a good while longer at the current pace -- hopefully decades. One wonders if everyone they found has ALS like symptoms if that points to my motor neuron disease being coincidental with football or whether the study focussed too narrowly on only one type of motor neuron disease.
Another interesting aspect is that there are hints on Real Sports and the articles I've seen that some friends and teammates might have had the newly described disorder. For example, two close-friend boxers were discussed on Real Sports.
Given that the newly described disorder is still incredibly rare (only 16 times or so more prevalent than ALS), having friends or teammates get the disease seems highly unusual -- perhaps indicative or some viral or other modality coupled with the head trauma -- though of course you can always have two lottery winners living next door.
In this regard, one of my football coaches with whom I spent four years working died in his 40s of "ALS" and his symptoms began about 3 years after mine.
Cheers.
Diffuse axonal injury (DAI) isn't as mysterious as Zimmer implies. It's actually kind of cool from a physics standpoint. The shearing occurs at the interfaces between different types of brain tissues due to the different densities of the tissues. Also, the theory of long term neurotrauma presenting as ALS is pretty thin.
-TBI researcher
Graphic image warning!
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/graphic-evidenc/