Can football head-hitting impact the brain?
Researchers say that football players who use their heads to pass or block the ball are more likely to have changes in the layers of their brains and are more likely to have mental health problems.
According to foreign media, a new study has said that ‘heading’ the football, i.e. hitting it with the head, can affect the mental health of football players. Researchers have reported in the journal Neurology that players who use their heads to pass or block the football are more likely to have changes in the layers of their brains. These layers are in the wrinkled outer part of the brain, called the cerebral cortex.
According to Dr Michael Lipton, a professor of radiology at Columbia University, players who headed the ball more often had more blockages and disruptions in a specific part of the brain’s layers, and these blockages are associated with poorer performance on thinking and memory tests. The study further raises concerns about the impact of sports-related head injuries and concussions on the mental health of players.
For the study, researchers scanned the brains of 352 amateur soccer players in the greater New York City area, as well as 77 other players who participated in non-contact sports. The average age of the amateur players in the study was 26 years old. The soccer players were divided into four groups based on how often they headed the ball during the game, with the highest group averaging 3,152 headers per year, while the lowest group averaged 105 headers per year.
The researchers say that in soccer players who headed the ball the most, the scans showed more changes in the white matter in the layers of the brain. As the number of headers increased, this area of white matter became more affected, especially the orbitofrontal region, located just above the eye sockets.According to the researchers, thinking and memory tests showed that soccer players who had more white matter disruption had worse learning and memory performance.
According to Professor Dr Michael Lipton, players with more white matter disruptions performed poorly on memory and learning tests. Our results suggest that this white matter in the layers of the brain can be affected by repeated head-to-head contact and could be an important site for detecting sports-related brain injuries. However, further research is needed to better understand this relationship and develop methods for early diagnosis of brain injuries.
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