While football beats out baseball and basketball to claim the title of America ’s favorite sport , it has a hidden grim side . Thanks to the many whacks to the head that players encounter , over 40 percentretire with brain injuries andmany end up witha neurodegenerative disease scream inveterate traumatic encephalopathy ( CTE ) . In fact , a 2017 studyfound that 110 out of 111 NFL players had CTE .
Now , a new study looks at how the sport affect the brains of teenagers , which are still undergo all important development .
A squad pass by scientist at the University of California , Berkeley take in MRI scan of football thespian aged between 15 and 17 , both before and after a high school football season . All of the players wore helmet and none of them suffered any concussion .
write their findings inNeurobiology of Disease , the squad spotted some substantial changes in their subjects ’ brain after just one time of year of football game . They notice microstructural changes in the gray topic of various neighborhood of the mind , mainly at the front and back where blow are most probable .
Gray affair is a case of brainpower tissue that hold back pot of nerve cell . The squad find significant deviation in the cortical gray thing , which is found in the outer layer of the brain . change were also seen deeply within the brain in the gray matter of the thalamus and putamen , which are involved in communicating sensory information and regulating social movement .
It is authoritative to remark that the study only looked at the mental capacity of 16 players , so more research is needed to substantiate the result . Still , the finding add to agrowingbodyofevidencethat football can have some spectacular event on the learning ability ’s structure . It ’s undecipherable how the changes might affect the teens ’ cognitive abilities in the future , but the researcher note that they ’re unconvincing to do trade good .
“ Although our study did not expect into the consequences of the observed change , there is emerging evidence suggesting that such changes would be harmful over the long term , ” Chunlei Liu , the study ’s senior writer , say in astatement .
CTE , which is a newly identified disease , seem to touch a worrying number of college and professional football game players , as well as soldier and underdrawers , and is due to repeated impacts to the oral sex . It leads to a build - up of a harmful protein called tau in the mental capacity – a protein also implicate inAlzheimer’sand Parkinson ’s disease – which can leave to personality modification , dementia , and subject with movement .
“ It is becoming pretty unmortgaged that repetitive impact to the chief , even over a curt period of meter , can cause changes in the mentality , ” noted Liu .
