By ALAN SCHWARZ The National Football League is producing a poster that bluntly alerts its players to the long-term effects of concussions, using words like “depression” and “early onset of dementia” that those close to the issue described as both staggering and overdue. The poster, soon to be hung in locker rooms leaguewide, becomes by far the N.F.L.’s most definitive statement on the cognitive risks of football, which it had discredited for most of the past several years as academic studies and reports of deceased players’ brain damage mounted. The new document also warns players that repeated concussions “can change your life and your family’s life forever,” a clear nod to retired players’ wives who have spoken out on the issue, occasionally before Congress. A draft of the poster also features photographs of unnamed youngsters in various sports with the reminder, “Other athletes are watching.” The new poster, which will also become a brochure given to all players, presents a stark change in league approach. It replaces a pamphlet given since 2007 that said, “Current research with professional athletes has not shown that having more than one or two concussions leads to permanent problems if each injury is treated properly,” and also left open the question of “if there are any long-term effects of concussion in N.F.L. athletes.” Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 14289 - Posted: 07.27.2010

By Charles Q. Choi The blast waves from explosions could jolt the skull into generating electricity, potentially damaging the brain, scientists now suggest. Although the burns and shrapnel wounds that explosions can inflict are their most obvious hazards, perhaps the greatest danger comes from a blast's shock wave. These rapidly generate ripples in a person's innards, potentially causing traumatic brain injuries with deleterious effects ranging from a simple concussion to long-term impaired mental function. Now scientists have uncovered a surprising possible way by which a blast might affect the brain — electric fields created when bone is hit by a shock wave. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here "It's always exciting to look at a phenomenon that may have been missed in the past," said researcher Steven Johnson, a theoretical physicist at MIT. "Moreover, this is potentially an issue that can directly affect the lives of our soldiers , which gives it a special interest for all of us who are involved." A variety of materials generate electricity when mechanically stressed. This effect, known as piezoelectricity, is commonly seen in guitar pickups and loudspeakers. Johnson and his colleagues developed a new computer model of the electric fields generated in the skull by an improvised explosive device (IED) — the kind often rigged up nowadays in combat zones. The model results suggest the generated electric fields could exceed electrical safety guidelines by a factor of 10. In fact, they might be comparable in magnitude to medical procedures employing electromagnetic fields that can disrupt brain function. © 2010 LiveScience.com.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry; Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain; Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 14001 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALAN SCHWARZ ANNAPOLIS, Md.,— The night that Sylvia Mackey and Eleanor Perfetto first met, back in October at a Baltimore Ravens reception for former National Football League players and their families, their connection was immediate. As she sat on a couch with her husband, Mrs. Mackey watched Dr. Perfetto cradle the hand of her husband as he blankly shuffled across the floor toward the Mackeys. “Your husband has dementia,” Mrs. Mackey said. “Yours does, too,” Dr. Perfetto replied. “We both just knew,” Dr. Perfetto recalled on Friday, when the two visited the assisted-living facility where Dr. Perfetto’s husband, Ralph Wenzel, resides. Mrs. Mackey quickly added, “You can see it in the wives’ faces just like the husbands’.” On that evening last October, Mrs. Mackey added another N.F.L. wife to her growing network of women who seek her guidance and support as their husbands deteriorate mentally. Her husband, John, was a Hall of Fame tight end for the Baltimore Colts in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and is probably the most notable victim of dementia among former football players. Mrs. Mackey said that she regularly communicates with about 10 women like Dr. Perfetto as they learn to handle their husbands’ dementia, which often begins as early as their 50s. “I know about 20 in all,” Mrs. Mackey said. “And if I know 20, there are probably 60 or 80 out there.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 10072 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALAN SCHWARZ Since the former National Football League player Andre Waters killed himself in November, an explanation for his suicide has remained a mystery. But after examining remains of Mr. Waters’s brain, a neuropathologist in Pittsburgh is claiming that Mr. Waters had sustained brain damage from playing football and he says that led to his depression and ultimate death. Chris Nowinski, a former Harvard football player and professional wrestler, contacted Dr. Bennet Omalu after he read about Mr. Waters’s suicide. The neuropathologist, Dr. Bennet Omalu of the University of Pittsburgh, a leading expert in forensic pathology, determined that Mr. Waters’s brain tissue had degenerated into that of an 85-year-old man with similar characteristics as those of early-stage Alzheimer’s victims. Dr. Omalu said he believed that the damage was either caused or drastically expedited by successive concussions Mr. Waters, 44, had sustained playing football. In a telephone interview, Dr. Omalu said that brain trauma “is the significant contributory factor” to Mr. Waters’s brain damage, “no matter how you look at it, distort it, bend it. It’s the significant forensic factor given the global scenario.” He added that although he planned further investigation, the depression that family members recalled Mr. Waters exhibiting in his final years was almost certainly exacerbated, if not caused, by the state of his brain — and that if he had lived, within 10 or 15 years “Andre Waters would have been fully incapacitated.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry; Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain; Chapter 12: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 9855 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Andy Coghlan Crazy as it sounds, alcohol may one day be given to people with brain injuries to help them recover. The idea has arisen from a study of 38,000 people with head injuries, which found that those with alcohol in their blood were more likely to survive. For every 100 people who died when stone-cold sober, only 88 died with ethanol – the kind of alcohol in drinks – in their veins. "The finding raises the intriguing possibility that administering ethanol to patients with brain injuries may improve outcome," conclude the investigators. Lead researcher Ali Salim of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles said he hoped a trial could be mounted, but more information is needed first. "We need a better understanding of the exact mechanism, the appropriate dose and specific timing of treatment before we can embark on clinical trials," he told New Scientist. Salim said that several previous studies have found similar beneficial effects – although others do not. Animal experiments, meanwhile, suggest that relatively low doses of alcohol protect the brain from injury, but high doses increase the risk of death. More research is also needed to establish how alcohol protects the brain, but Salim says it may work by blunting the amount of adrenalin reaching the brain, which reduces inflammation. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry; Chapter 4: The Chemical Bases of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 13290 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Andrew Holtz PORTLAND, OREGON -- It is easy to understand how explosions involving shrapnel – such as those caused by improvised explosive devices in Iraq – could cause brain damage. But what about such injuries that seem to be caused by blasts themselves, rather than from being thrown or hit by shrapnel? Researchers have a few ideas, but one scientist has used some of the world’s most powerful computers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to get a better answer. Willy Moss and colleague Michael King used available data on blast waves from explosions and the physical properties of the human skull, brain and cerebrospinal fluid to craft a three-dimensional simulation of a soldier standing less than 15 feet from an explosion of 5 lbs. of C4. (See image to the right.) “It sweeps over. There’s lots of oscillation. The skull is ringing. It’s not pleasant,” Moss told the audience at the meeting of the Acoustical Society of America here. Moss says their simulations suggest that the intense pressures of such blasts flex the skull and ripple the brain. Pressures as little as one atmosphere over normal atmospheric pressure can do that kind of damage. They repeated the simulation to include helmets, first using data from an older style that uses webbing to create space around a soldier’s head. (See video below.) “What you see is the blast sweeps under the helmet. It acts as a wind scoop; it focuses the blast. The blast pressure is bigger between your head and the helmet than if you weren’t wearing the helmet at all.” © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 12872 - Posted: 06.24.2010

HELEN BRANSWELL Traumatic brain injuries have become the signature wound of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and troops who sustain them face a daunting array of potential medical consequences later on, a report on the issue commissioned by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The report from the Institute of Medicine – a body that advises the U.S. government on science, medicine and health – said military personnel who sustain severe or even moderate brain injuries may go on to develop Alzheimer's-like dementia or symptoms similar to Parkinson's, a neurodegenerative disease. They face a higher risk of developing seizure disorders and psychoses, problems with social interactions and difficulty holding down a job. Troops who sustain even mild brain injuries are more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And all are at a higher risk of experiencing aggressive behaviour, depression and memory problems. The report urged the U.S. government to ramp up research in the area, saying there is not enough evidence in the medical literature – especially as relates to mild brain injuries – to determine what today's troops face and how best to help them recover from or cope with the health problems they may develop. © Copyright 2008 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 12336 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It's a scene football fans will see over and over during the bowl and NFL playoff seasons: a player, often the quarterback, being slammed to the ground and hitting the back of his head on the landing. Sure, it hurts, but what happens to the inside of the skull? Researchers and doctors long have relied upon crude approximations made from test dummy crashes or mathematical models that infer – rather loosely – what happens to the brain during traumatic brain injury or concussion. But the truth is that the state of the art in understanding brain deformation after impact is rather crude and uncertain because such methods don't give any true picture of what happens. Now, mechanical engineers at Washington University in St. Louis and collaborators have devised a technique on humans that for the first time shows just what the brain does when the skull accelerates.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Nervous System and Behavior; Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 2: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System; Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 8288 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PITTSBURGH, – High school and college athletes with migraine headache characteristics after a concussion may have increased neurocognitive impairment, suggests a University of Pittsburgh Sports Medicine Concussion Program study published in the May issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery. The study results speak to the need for extreme caution in clinical evaluation and return-to-play decisions, say the authors. In the study, athletes who had characteristics of post-traumatic migraine (PTM) headache following a concussion also showed increased neurocognitive function impairment and related symptoms compared to concussed athletes with no post-injury headache or non-migraine headache. "The findings of our study strongly support the need for clinicians to exercise increased vigilance in making decisions about managing a concussed athlete with PTM and extreme caution as to when that athlete should be allowed to return to play," said the study's lead author, Jason Mihalik, CAT(C), A.T.C., who now is a doctoral student working in the Sports Medicine Research Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "This research is important because headache is the most common reported symptom after a sports-related head injury. As many as 86 percent of these injuries are accompanied by some type of headache," commented study co-author Joseph Maroon, M.D., professor of neurological surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 7539 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NEW ORLEANS – A new study in rats has found that after severe spinal cord injury, molecules intended to help nerves communicate can attack the tissue surrounding the initial injury and cause further damage. Interestingly, this latent, or secondary, injury develops over days and even weeks after the initial injury. It also appears to cause larger, more debilitating lesions in the spinal cord, said Randy Christensen, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience at Ohio State University. Receiving the initial brunt of the secondary trauma seem to be the neurons, or the cells in gray matter. As time passes, however, tissue in the white matter is also destroyed by secondary damage. Oligodendrocytes, the main cell type in white matter, begin to self-destruct during the secondary injury.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 4518 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Penn scientists find that coaster G’s, twists, and speeds are not enough to injure the brain (Philadelphia, PA) – To meet the growing expectations of thrill-seekers, amusement park rides have been built bigger, faster, and more exciting. But do bigger thrills come with added risks of injury? Published medical case studies have proposed a link between roller coaster forces and brain injury. Already the State of New Jersey has enacted legislation limiting G forces, and similar legislation has been proposed by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. According to a pair of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, however, medical science does not support the notion that roller coasters produce forces large enough to harm the brains of riders. Their findings are presented in the October issue of the Journal of Neurotrauma. "We should step back and separate the facts from the hype," said Douglas H. Smith, MD, from the Department of Neurosurgery and the Head Injury Center at the Penn School of Medicine and co-author of the study. "To our knowledge, no peer-reviewed studies have definitively linked brain injury in healthy individuals to riding the latest, and most powerful roller coasters. In fact, G forces really aren't the issue here."

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 2813 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A now deceased NHL player had a brain condition linked to concussions — the first time a professional hockey player has been diagnosed with the disease. Reggie Fleming played 13 crushing seasons as a defenceman and forward during the 1960s and 1970s. Fleming was one of the National Hockey League's hardest hitters in the days before helmets. After Fleming died on July 11 at the age of 73, he became the first NHL player to have his brain examined by the Sports Legacy Institute, which is studying the long-term impact of concussions. "We discovered that Mr. Fleming was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy when he died," said Chris Nowinski, co-director of the institute in Boston. "It's a progressive degenerative disease." Chronic traumatic encephalopathy CTE is characterized by a build-up of a toxic protein called tau — the same abnormal protein found in Alzheimer's disease. At first, the abnormal protein impairs normal brain function and eventually kills brain cells. The symptoms — memory impairment, emotional instability, erratic behaviour, depression and problems with impulse control and eventually dementia — are similar to Alzheimer's, which is why athletes may be misdiagnosed. But the proteins are distributed in different parts of the brain. © CBC 2009

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 13588 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALAN SCHWARZ No direct impact caused Paul McQuigg’s brain injury in Iraq three years ago. And no wound from the incident visibly explains why Mr. McQuigg, now an office manager at a California Marine base, can get lost in his own neighborhood or arrive at the grocery store having forgotten why he left home. But his blast injury — concussive brain trauma caused by an explosion’s invisible force waves — is no less real to him than a missing limb is to other veterans. Just how real could become clearer after he dies, when doctors slice up his brain to examine any damage. Mr. McQuigg, 32, is one of 20 active and retired members of the military who recently agreed to donate their brain tissue upon death so that the effects of blast injuries — which, unlike most concussions, do not involve any direct contact with the head — can be better understood and treated. The research will be conducted by the Sports Legacy Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Waltham, Mass., and by the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, whose recent examination of the brains of deceased football players has found damage linked to cognitive decline and depression. Whether single, non-impact blasts in battle can cause the same damage as the years of repetitive head bashing seen in football is of particular interest to researchers. The damage, primarily toxic protein deposits and tangled brain fibers, cannot be detected through noninvasive procedures like M.R.I.’s and CT scans. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 12973 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY A long-awaited government report is calling on the military to test all new recruits for cognitive skills and then do large-scale studies of returning combat veterans to better evaluate and respond to traumatic brain injury, the signature wound of the Iraq war. For years, veterans’ advocates and researchers have called for more careful investigation of head injuries — not just severe wounds but also “closed head” injuries, which do not produce visible damage and do not show up on CT scans. Some doctors and veterans say the high blast impact of I.E.D.’s, the roadside explosives that have accounted for most head injuries to troops in Iraq, may be creating symptoms that differ from the sort of concussions suffered in sports or car accidents. Many veterans have complained of persistent, sometimes disabling symptoms like sleeplessness, dizziness and confusion that can resemble disorders like post-traumatic stress and can complicate disability assessments. The report, released Thursday by the Institute of Medicine, a government advisory group that studies health and medical issues, recommends that the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs conduct careful studies “to confirm reports of long-term or latent effects of exposure to blasts.” Some 5,500 military personnel have suffered brain injuries from mild to severe. The wounds account for an estimated 22 percent of all casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq — about twice the rate in Vietnam. Experts attribute this increase in part to better on-site medical care and body armor that allows ground troops to survive blasts that would otherwise be deadly. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 12314 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DANIEL BERGNER “You want to wear this or this for therapy tomorrow?” Sgt. Shurvon Phillip’s mother asked, holding two shirts in front of him. On one wall of his bedroom hung a poster of a marine staring fiercely, assault rifle in hand and black paint beneath his narrow eyes. Shurvon’s eyes, meanwhile, are wide and soft brown. He sat upright, supported by the tilt of a hospital bed. He cannot speak and can barely emit sound or move any part of his body, and sometimes it’s as if the striking size of his eyes is a desperate attempt to let others understand who he is, to let them see inside his mind, because his brain can carry out so little in the way of communication. Keeping Hope Alive Shurvon’s mother has been his greatest advocate and believer. He gazed at the two shirts and, with excruciating effort and several seconds’ delay, managed to jab his gnarled right hand a few inches toward his choice, a black pullover with writing on the front. White letters declared the man, and a white arrow pointed upward to his head; red letters proclaimed the legend, and a red arrow pointed downward to his groin. Gail Ulerie, Shurvon’s mother, had already received his O.K. — a painstaking raising of his eyebrows — on a pair of jeans. Mostly, Shurvon can answer only yes-or-no questions. The slightly lifted brows, a gesture that stretches his eyes yet wider, signify yes. A slow lowering of his lids indicates no. Now, with tomorrow’s clothes decided, Gail, a Trinidadian-American, reclined Shurvon’s bed for the night. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 11661 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Heidi Ledford US soldiers who became concussed during deployment in Iraq are more likely to report poor general health than are veterans with other injuries, a study has found. But questions remain about what causes those lingering health problems: the physical blow to the head, or the emotional trauma associated with violent experiences. A study released today, in the New England Journal of Medicine, notes that the link between concussion and poor health might have resulted from higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder in those with head injuries1. "The possibility that symptoms could be accounted for by emotional disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder is very important for us to know," says Roger Pitman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. "We have to be very careful about who we call 'brain-damaged', because of the possible adverse effects of labelling people in this way." Traumatic brain injuries are the most common physical injury seen in troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan — largely thanks to improvised explosive devices. They have been designated a 'signature' of the two conflicts. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 11263 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JAN HOFFMAN WEST ORANGE, N.J. — In the therapy gym for the minimally functional, Jodi Levin props a patient between cushions, kneels behind him and then braces him with her arms. She directs his mother to select photos of his brother and his father. At the coaxing of Ms. Levin, an occupational therapist on the brain injury unit of Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, the mother holds one photo to the left side of the patient’s head, the other to the right. “Look at Dad’s picture,” Ms. Levin urges. “Dad’s on the left. Find Dad. You can do it!” The patient, wobbly and glazed, tries mightily to understand her command and then heed it by compelling his neck to turn. He almost makes it. Gently letting him go, catching him as he flops, Ms. Levin explains to his mother, “Now I’m working on trunk control.” The man flinches. “It’s the basis of everything,” she continues. “For getting in and out of bed, brushing teeth, getting dressed.” Eight weeks earlier, the patient, 18, wearing a helmet and protective leather gear, had been riding his motorcycle to community college. As he came over a hill, the car in front slowed abruptly; to avoid hitting it, the teenager swerved and was hit by an oncoming car. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 11212 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALAN SCHWARZ Vin Ferrara, a former Harvard quarterback, was looking for an aspirin in his medicine cabinet when his eyes fixed upon a ribbed plastic bottle used to squirt saline into sinuses. Ferrara squeezed the bottle, then pounded on it — finding that it cushioned soft and hard blows with equal aplomb, almost intelligence. “This is it,” Ferrara declared. Three years later, Ferrara’s squirt bottle has led to a promising new technology to protect football players from concussions. Football helmets have evolved over more than a century from crude leather bonnets to face-masked, polycarbonate battering rams. But they still often fail to protect brains from the sudden forces that cause concussions. Studies have found that 10 to 50 percent of high school players each season sustain concussions, whose effects can range from persistent memory problems and depression to coma and death. Contemporary helmet manufacturers have made a point of improving protection against concussions. But experts suspect that Ferrara, who sustained several concussions as a player himself, has developed a radically effective design. Rather than being lined with rows of traditional foam or urethane, Ferrara’s helmet features 18 black, thermoplastic shock absorbers filled with air that — not unlike his squirt bottle — can accept a wide range of forces and still moderate the sudden jarring of the head that causes concussion. Moreover, laboratory tests have shown that the disks can withstand hundreds of impacts without any notable degradation in performance, a longtime drawback of helmets’ traditional foam. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 10898 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALAN SCHWARZ WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — Hannah Stohler sat beside the piano she could no longer play, in the living room that spun like a carousel, in the chair in which she tried to read but could not remember a word. Ten months after her third concussion while playing high school soccer knocked her into a winter-long haze of headaches and dizziness and depression that few around her could comprehend, Stohler recalled how she once viewed concussions. “I thought they were a football injury — a boy thing,” said Stohler, a junior at Conard High School in West Hartford, Conn. “Those guys are taught to hit hard and knock people to the ground. But anyone can get a concussion, and I don’t think a lot of girls recognize that. They have no idea how awful the effects can be — it changes your life.” Stohler, 16, has more company than most people know. While football does have the most concussions (and controversy over their treatment) in high school athletics, girls competing in sports like soccer and basketball are more susceptible to concussions than boys are in the same sports, studies show. According to a study to be published in the Journal of Athletic Training, in high school soccer, girls sustained concussions 68 percent more often than boys did. Female concussion rates in high school basketball were almost three times higher than among boys. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 10803 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALAN SCHWARZ To Kelby Jasmon, there was only one answer. The question: If he received yet another concussion this football season, while playing offensive and defensive line for his high school in Springfield, Ill., would he tell a coach or trainer? Jasmon, with his battering-ram, freshly buzz-cut head and eyes that danced with impending glory, immediately answered: “No chance. It’s not dangerous to play with a concussion. You’ve got to sacrifice for the sake of the team. The only way I come out is on a stretcher.” Jasmon, a senior with three concussions on his r�sum�, looked at two teammates for support and unity. They said the same thing with the same certainty: They did not quite know what a concussion was, and would never tell their coaches if they believed they had sustained one. Matt Selvaggio, who plays with Jasmon on both lines, said: “Our coaches would take us out in a second. So why would we tell them?” Many of the 1.2 million teenagers who play high school football are chanting similar war whoops as they strap on their helmets. They either do not know what a concussion is or they simply do not care. Their code of silence, bred by football’s gladiator culture, allows them to play on and sometimes be hurt much worse — sometimes fatally. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 10740 - Posted: 06.24.2010