Veterans Administration Hospital

There are studies being done now at two different institutes, one place is Veterans Administration hospital. These studies are being done on deceased players brains by Dr. Ann McKee who is also an associate professor of neurology and pathology at Boston University. She is not only studying deceased ex-NFL brains, but also deceased high school and college football players brains. Within the past three years she has been given 16 ex-NFL players brains, some of the brains that she has gotten are from ex-NFL players that suffered from ALS, dementia, or severe depression. She is in the process of doing these studies to identify any link between football and the psychological, physical or behavioral problems that afflict older players. She's completed tests on 14 brains, 13 of them have been diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Through her studies she has seen brains of people that have never played football in their lives, and the distinction between the brains of regular people in the general population versus football players is that she only sees evidence of CTE among football players. It comes from the repetitive head trauma that football players sustain.

The second institute that is conducting test is using high school students. The University of Purdue's engineering professors are conducting these tests. They put accelerometers in helmets and put players through something called the ImPACT test, what this test is, is a computerized neurocognitive exam that tests players memory and concentration and also tests of working memory while their brains were monitored with MRI's (magnetic resonance imaging). What these professors and associates were/are attempting to understand is "what kinds of hits cause a concussion and what the consequences are". They used NFL sponsored studies as a guide they came to the conclusion that something that hits in excess of 80 times the force of gravity would cause concussions... so on the first day of full contact practice when they saw hits of over 100 G's they were thinking "Oh my god, were going to be carrying these kids off the field". Well they were worrying about nothing, none of the hits correlated to a concussion. Through three weeks of the football season the study team had only one concussion to study. Once they found they weren't encountering numerous concussions they decided to bring players back in to retake the ImPACT test and get their brains rescanned with functional MRIs (fMRI). What the fMRI means is that they would get brain images of blood flow to pinpoint active areas in the brain. Things then got interesting, because these players were meant to serve as a control group for later comparison to concussed teammates. What ended up happening is this group of players ended up making these professors expand their research field, and the group of players now are case studies for the professors. What was and is happening

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