Football Affects Youth Brain Development After Just One Season, Study Says

(CNN) — Their youthful brains were developing normally, with no signs of developmental, psychological or neurological problems. None had ever had a concussion. But by the end of a single football season, 24 children between the ages of 9 and 18 who had more frequent impacts to the head showed signs of damage to brain development, new research says. “Repetitive head impact exposure may have a cumulative effect in the rapidly developing brains of youth and high school football players,” said study co-author Gowtham Krishnan Murugesan, a radiology research assistant at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, adding that the results mirror other recent findings. The study outfitted 60 youth and high school football players who had no history of head trauma or developmental issues with a head impact telemetry system that measures the magnitude, location and direction of impacts to the head. The researchers were not looking at whether the impact resulted in a concussion, only that impact occurred. The children were sorted into two categories: high cumulative head impact players (24) and low cumulative head impact players (36). Before beginning to play, each child had a resting state functional scan, known as an fMRI; the scans were repeated at the end of football season. The researchers were trying to see how exposure to repetitive hits affects the normal “pruning” process in the brain that occurs during adolescence. “Pruning is an essential pa...
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