Concussions May Damage Areas Of The Brain Related To Memory

Concussions May Damage Areas Of The Brain Related To Memory.
Concussions may harm areas of the perceptiveness linked to memory in National Football League players. And that mutilation might linger long after the players withdraw the sport, according to a small study. "We're hoping that our findings are present to further inform the game," Dr Jennifer Coughlin, an subordinate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said in a university item release sodium. "That may effective individuals are able to make more educated decisions about whether they're influenceable to brain injury, advise how helmets are structured or divulge guidelines for the game to better protect players".

The study included nine ancient NFL players, ages 57 to 74. The million of concussions they suffered while playing heterogeneous from none to 40. The study also included a control group of nine adults with no retailing of concussion. Sophisticated PET scans revealed signs of impair in a number of areas of the former football players' brains, including a ambit that regulates mood and one linked to verbatim memory. MRI scans also showed that the hippocampus, an yard involved in several aspects of memory, was smaller in the former football players' brains than it was in the brains of those in the oversight group.

The findings are published in the February issuance of the journal Neurobiology of Disease. Many of the recent football players also scored low on memory tests, strikingly those used to assess verbal learning and memory. While it's a immature study, the findings suggest that molecular and structural changes come to pass in certain brain regions of athletes who've suffered numerous hits to the head, even years after they stopped playing, the researchers said. However, the findings only to spike to an league between repeated concussions and long-term breakdown of memory, not a cause-and-effect relationship scriptovore.com. The researchers added that if the findings are confirmed in larger studies, they could paramount to changes in the progress players are treated after a concussion, or how communicate with sports are played.