Brief Guide to the CTE Brains in the News. Part 1: Aaron Hernandez

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is the neurodegenerative disease of the moment, made famous by the violent and untimely deaths of many retired professional athletes. Repeated blows to the head sustained in contact sports such asboxing and American football can result in abnormal accumulations oftau protein (usually many years later). The autopsied brains from two of these individuals are shown below.Left: courtesy of Dr. Ann McKee inNYT. Right: courtesy of Dr. Bennett Omalu inCNN. These are coronal sections1 from the autopsied brains of: (L) Aaron Hernandez, aged 27; and(R) Fred McNeill, aged 63.Both men played professional football in the NFL. Both came upon some troubled times after leaving the game. And although the CTE pathology in their brains has been attributed directly to football — repeated concussive and sub-concussive events — other potential factors have been mostly ignored. Below I ' ll discuss these events and phenomena, and whether they could have contributed to the condition of the post-mortem brains.Aaron HernandezIllustration by Sean McCabe forRolling StoneTalented ex-NFL football star, PCP addict, convicted murderer, and suicide by hanging. TheRolling Stone ran tworiveting articles that detailed the life (and death) of Mr. Hernandez. Despite a difficult upbringing surrounded by violence and tragedy, he was a serious and stellar athlete at Bristol High School. The tragic death of his father from a medical accident led Aaron to hang out with a...
Source: The Neurocritic - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Source Type: blogs