Study suggests altered brain development among former NFL players

Obviously, other sources of impacts, including blows from parents, can be expected to show the same problem.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/bumc-ssa081015.php

Public Release: 10-Aug-2015
Study suggests altered brain development among former NFL players
Players had started to play tackle football before age 12
Boston University Medical Center

Former National Football League (NFL) players who started playing tackle football before the age of 12 were found to have a higher risk of altered brain development compared to those who started playing at a later age. The study is the first to demonstrate a link between early exposure to repetitive head impacts and later life structural brain changes.

•••••

The results showed that the research participants who started playing football before age 12 were more likely to have alterations of the white matter tracts of the corpus callosum, the largest structure of the brain that connects the two cerebral hemispheres.

According to the researchers there is growing evidence that there is a "critical window" of brain development between ages 10-12, when the brain may be especially susceptible to injury. "Therefore, this development process may be disrupted by repeated head impacts in childhood possibly leading to lasting changes in brain structure," explained lead author Julie Stamm, PhD, currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, who conducted this study as part of her doctoral dissertation at BUSM, and who was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

•••••