Even with rest, brain changes linked to football linger

Repeated helmet impacts have been linked to changes in the white matter of some football players' brains. The changes lingered even after six months of no-contact rest, which suggests that repeated hits over many seasons may lead to cumulative alterations, scientists say.

Damon J. Moritz/Wikimedia Commons

The offseason may not allow enough time for football players’ brains to heal from hard hits.

A new study looked at the brains and head impacts (an average of 431 to 1,850 per player per season) of 10 division III college football players. None of the players were diagnosed with a concussion. But images show that five of the athletes still had changes in their brains’ white matter six months after the season ended, suggesting that any mild injury had not healed, researchers report April 16 in PLOS ONE.

The results also suggest that inflammation may contribute to whether players recover in the offseason and may provide another marker for doctors to use to determine when a player can get back in the game.

Ashley Yeager is the associate news editor at Science News. She has worked at The Scientist, the Simons Foundation, Duke University and the W.M. Keck Observatory, and was the web producer for Science News from 2013 to 2015. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT.

More Stories from Science News on Neuroscience

From the Nature Index

Paid Content