Concussions May Damage Areas Of The Brain Related To Memory

Concussions May Damage Areas Of The Brain Related To Memory.
Concussions may mutilation areas of the discernment joint to memory in National Football League players. And that injure might linger long after the players drop the sport, according to a small study. "We're hoping that our findings are universal to further inform the game," Dr Jennifer Coughlin, an second professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said in a university report release citation. "That may middle individuals are able to make more educated decisions about whether they're suggestible to brain injury, advise how helmets are structured or tell guidelines for the game to better protect players".

The study included nine past NFL players, ages 57 to 74. The several of concussions they suffered while playing diverse from none to 40. The study also included a control group of nine adults with no narration of concussion. Sophisticated PET scans revealed signs of spoil in a number of areas of the former football players' brains, including a locality that regulates mood and one linked to word memory shipping. MRI scans also showed that the hippocampus, an territory involved in several aspects of memory, was smaller in the former football players' brains than it was in the brains of those in the check group.

The findings are published in the February appear of the journal Neurobiology of Disease. Many of the ci-devant football players also scored low on memory tests, notably those used to assess verbal learning and memory. While it's a unimportant study, the findings suggest that molecular and structural changes surface 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 spot to an intimacy between repeated concussions and long-term privation of memory, not a cause-and-effect relationship manual pro extender in lawton. The researchers added that if the findings are confirmed in larger studies, they could precedent to changes in the method players are treated after a concussion, or how phone sports are played.