Football and hockey players aren’t doomed to suffer brain damage
Tests on former pro athletes’ brains shows the tissues in better shape than expected
A career of hard hits to the head doesn’t inevitably lead to brain decline, a small study of former football and hockey pros suggests. The results counter a specter raised by other studies on pro football players’ brains after death.
The new findings come from extensive brain scans and behavioral tests of 21 retired athletes — football players from New York’s Buffalo Bills and hockey players from the Buffalo Sabres. In a series of papers published August 7 in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, researchers report finding no signs among the athletes of early dementia or mental slipping. Those symptoms are early hallmarks of the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which can be diagnosed by a brain examination only after death.