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Effects of repeated mild head impacts in contact sports

Concussions are becoming better recognized because they are widely covered in the media. This is because researchers are collecting strong proof about how a concussion changes brain function. Experts now have information on long-lasting problems from repeated concussions. In addition, there can be short-term problems from only one concussion. However, often during contact sports athletes may get hit many times, but that injury does not meet current conditions for a concussion.1 These individual impacts—or hits—during a game do not cause loss of consciousness or change in brain function. The added effects of these smaller impacts are uncertain. In the article “Cognitive effects of one season of head impacts in a cohort of collegiate contact sport athletes,”2 the authors wanted to measure the effects of repeated impacts even though the individual “hits” did not cause problems with cognitive function that meet the conditions for a concussion. Cognitive function is the process of thinking, judgment, problem solving, and learning. The authors set out to test if repeated head impacts over a single season would hurt a person's cognitive performance. If they saw a change, they also wanted to see if there was a link to how many hits the athlete had.

The authors took 214 Division I college football and hockey players and put a device in their helmets. This device recorded the force and time of impacts during the season. They compared these players to 45 noncontact college athletes such as runners and rowers. Any athlete who had a concussion either in the past or during the season was excluded from the study. Information about both the maximum force per impact and the number of impacts an athlete had was recorded.

To study the cognitive effects of the impacts, the athletes were tested using computer tests to measure memory, …