New Study Details How Brain Injury from Concussions Progresses

The lasting impact that concussions can have on the brain is on the minds of anyone involved in football, from parents of the youngest Pop Warner players to those in the professional ranks. More and more NFL players are succumbing to symptoms of memory loss, inability to concentrate and changes in personality that are being attributed to repeated blows to the head during play. But as their numbers grow, researchers are struggling to keep up with understanding the brain injuries that concussions can cause. Now, for the first time, scientists are classifying the brain injury from head trauma into four distinct stages.

Most agree that repeated mild trauma to the brain in the form of concussions can result in chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), or a gradual buildup of a brain protein called tau. Just as with Alzheimer’s patients, where accumulation of plaques and tau tangles can space out healthy brain tissue and cause nerve connections to wither away, damage from concussions can trigger the accumulation of tau in CTE cases —  eventually forming deposits large enough to interfere with key functions such as learning, planning and organization. In the latest study, which appears in the journal Brain, scientists led by Ann McKee, MD, studied the brains of 68 deceased patients with CTE in order to find patterns in the way the disease develops. For more information, click here to read the full release.