Brain Changes Seen In Young Football Players After Just One Season Of Playing, Researchers Say
The results of the small study suggest that repeated blows to the head could lead to changes critical to integrating cognitive, motor and sensory functions between the two hemispheres of the brain. Other news on children's concussions focuses on new recovery guidelines.
NPR:
Brain Changes Seen After A Single Season Of Youth Football
A single season playing football might be all it takes to change a young athlete's brain. Those are the preliminary findings of research presented this week in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. Researchers used special MRI methods to look at nerve bundles in the brain in a study of the brains of 26 young male football players, average age 12, before and after one season. Twenty-six more young males who didn't play football also got MRI scans at the same time to be used as a control group. (Westerman, 11/30)
NPR:
Docs Say Kids With Concussions Don't Have To Stay In The Dark For Days
A couple of weeks ago, eight-year-old Liam Ramsay-Leavitt of Martinez, Calif., was swinging on the monkey bars at school. "And then I just fell on my side," he says. "I was kind of dizzy and I had an achy head." It turns out that he had a concussion. (Singh, 12/3)
