Routine hits playing football cause damage to the brain

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Date:

August 7, 2019

Source:

Carnegie Mellon University

Summary:

New research indicates that concussions aren't the sole cause of damage to the brain in contact sports. A study of college football players found that typical hits sustained from playing just one season cause structural changes to the brain.

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New research led by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Rochester Medical Center indicates that concussions aren't the sole cause of damage to the brain in contact sports. A study of college football players found that typical hits sustained from playing just one season cause structural changes to the brain.

The researchers studied 38 University of Rochester players, putting accelerometers -- devices that measures accelerative force -- in their helmets for every practice and game. The players' brains were scanned in an MRI machine before and after a season of play.

While only two players suffered clinically diagnosed concussions during the time they were followed in the study, the comparison of the post- and pre-season MRIs showed greater than two-thirds of the players experienced a decrease in the structural integrity of their brain. Specifically, the researchers found reduced white matter integrity in the midbrain after the season compared to before the season. Furthermore, and indicating the injury was specifically related to playing football, the researchers found the amount of white matter damage was correlated with the number of hits to the head players sustained.

The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

"Public perception is that the big hits are the only ones that matter. It's what people talk about and what we often see being replayed on TV," said senior study author Brad Mahon, an associate professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon and scientific director of the Program for Translational Brain Mapping at the University of Rochester. "The big hits are definitely bad, but with the focus on the big hits, the public is missing what's likely causing the long-term damage in players' brains. It's not just the concussions. It's everyday hits, too."

The midbrain, located in the center of the head and just beneath the cerebral cortex, is part of a larger stalk-like rigid structure that includes the brain stem and the thalamus. The relative rigidity of the midbrain means it absorbs forces differently than surrounding softer tissues, making it biomechanically susceptible to the forces caused by head hits. The midbrain supports functions like eye movements, which are impacted by concussions and hits to the head. While head hits are known to affect many parts of the brain simultaneously, the researchers decided to focus the study on the midbrain, hypothesizing that this structure would be the "canary in the coal mine" for sub-concussive hits.

"We hypothesized and found that the midbrain is a key structure that can serve as an index of injury in both clinically defined concussions and repetitive head hits," said Adnan Hirad, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at the University of Rochester's Medical Scientist Training Program and lead author of the study. "What we cataloged in our study are things that can't be observed simply by looking at or behaviorally testing a player, on or off the field. These are 'clinically silent' brain injuries."

Each player in the study received an MRI scan within two weeks of the start of each season and within one week at the end. The helmet accelerometers measured linear and rotational acceleration during all practices and games, recording all contact that produced forces of 10 gs or greater. Astronauts on the space shuttle experienced 3 gs during lift-off. Race car drivers feel the effects of 6 gs, and car crashes can produce brief forces of more than 100 gs.

The 38 NCAA Division III players experienced nearly 20,000 hits across all practices and games. Of those hits, the median force was around 25 gs, with half of the hits exceeding that amount. Only two of the nearly 20,000 hits resulted in concussions.

"We measured the linear acceleration, rotational acceleration and direction of impact of every hit the players sustained. This allowed us to create a three-dimensional map of all of the forces their brains sustained," Hirad said.

The MRI scans measured structural changes in the brain that took place over the course of each season. They found that rotational acceleration (impact causing the head to twist) more so than linear acceleration (head-on impact) is correlated with the observed changes in the structural integrity of white matter in the midbrain.

"This study suggests that midbrain imaging using diffusion MRI might be a way in the future to diagnose injury from a single concussive head hit and/or from repetitive sub-concussive head hits," said Dr. Jeffrey Bazarian, professor of Emergency Medicine, Neurology, Neurosurgery and Public Health Sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center and a co-author of the study.

The second part of the study served as an independent means to validate the researchers' approach to the football cohort. This group included 29 athletes from various other contact sports who had a clinically defined concussion and 58 who didn't.

The concussed participants underwent MRI scans and offered blood samples within 72 hours of injury. Like the football cohort, those players exhibited reduced structural integrity in the midbrain. In addition, they exhibited increased tau, a protein, in their blood. As structural integrity in the brain decreases, tau increases.

"Tau is an important marker of acute changes in the brain and is thought to be, in the long term, implicated in neurodegenerative diseases like chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as CTE," Hirad said.

Given this new insight on repetitive head hits, what should we do?

"Our research, in the context of prior research over the past several years, is beginning to indicate that the accumulation of many sub-concussive hits is instrumental in driving long-term damage in football players' brains," Mahon said. "Future research will be required in order to translate our findings into concrete directives that are relevant to public health. An important direction for future research will be to carry out larger-scale longitudinal studies of contact sports athletes in various ages groups."

"We also need to re-evaluate how we make return-to-play decisions," Hirad said. "Right now, those decisions are made based on whether or not a player is exhibiting symptoms of a concussion like dizziness or loss of consciousness. Even without a concussion, the hits players are taking in practice and games appear to cause brain damage over time."

Sleep is essential for business leaders seeking next successful venture

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Date:

August 5, 2019

Source:

University of Central Florida

Summary:

The secret ingredient for coming up with great business ideas that can take off, may be something we can all tap into -- a good night's sleep. According to a new study, sleep plays an especially important role in not only identifying a good business idea, but in evaluating it and believing it is viable.

Businessman resting at desk (stock image).

Credit: © Syda Productions / Adobe Stock

Jeff Bezos and Arianna Huffington came up with brilliant ideas that turned into companies that are now household names -- Amazon and HuffPost. The secret ingredient for coming up with these ideas may be something we can all tap into -- a good night's sleep.

According to a new study, sleep plays an especially important role in not only identifying a good business idea, but in evaluating it and believing it is viable.

"Entrepreneurs who consistently choose hustle over sleep, thinking that sleep comes after success, may be subverting their efforts to succeed," says lead author Jeff Gish, an assistant business professor at the University of Central Florida. "Everyone needs a good night of sleep, but it is especially important for entrepreneurs."

The study was published in Journal of Business Venturing in late July.

Several studies have found a connection between sleep and job performance. Bezos and Huffington have both indicated they get plenty of sleep in various media interviews. But the new study found a link between sleep and the cognitive skills needed to identify and evaluate an idea. Entrepreneurs use experience and business knowledge to evaluate ideas that could turn into successful business ventures. But sleep appears to be an important factor as well.

The study surveyed more than 700 entrepreneurs from around the world. The surveys asked about sleep patterns, hours of sleep and types of sleep.

Business pitches were drafted and an independent panel of business experts reviewed and ranked the pitches as having the most potential, medium potential and least potential for success. Then the participants in the study reviewed the three pitches in the same day. Those leaders who had less sleep did not consistently pick the best pitches.

In the second part of the study, a smaller group of participants evaluated the pitches over several weeks while charting their sleep patterns. Those participants who had at least seven hours of sleep each night consistently selected the best pitches identified by the expert panel. Those who had less sleep or restless sleep did not consistently pick the best pitches.

"The evidence suggests that less sleep leads to less accurate beliefs about the commercial potential of a new venture idea," Gish says. "Since we compared individual performance over multiple days, we can say that these results are consistent even for entrepreneurs who don't sleep as much on average as the general population."

The study was completed at the University of Oregon, where Gish earned a doctorate in philosophy of management. Gish also holds a master's degree in engineering and technology management. Other collaborators on the study include: David T. Wagner from the University of Oregon, Denis A. Grégoire from HEC Montreal business school in Canada, and Christopher M. Barnes from the University of Washington.

Socially active 60-year-olds face lower dementia risk

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Date:

August 2, 2019

Source:

University College London

Summary:

Being more socially active in your 50s and 60s predicts a lower risk of developing dementia later on, finds a new UCL-led study published in PLOS Medicine.

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Being more socially active in your 50s and 60s predicts a lower risk of developing dementia later on, finds a new UCL-led study.

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The longitudinal study, published in PLOS Medicine, reports the most robust evidence to date that social contact earlier in life could play an important role in staving off dementia.

"Dementia is a major global health challenge, with one million people expected to have dementia in the UK by 2021, but we also know that one in three cases are potentially preventable," said the study's lead author, Dr Andrew Sommerlad (UCL Psychiatry).

"Here we've found that social contact, in middle age and late life, appears to lower the risk of dementia. This finding could feed into strategies to reduce everyone's risk of developing dementia, adding yet another reason to promote connected communities and find ways to reduce isolation and loneliness."

The research team used data from the Whitehall II study, tracking 10,228 participants who had been asked on six occasions between 1985 and 2013 about their frequency of social contact with friends and relatives. The same participants also completed cognitive testing from 1997 onwards, and researchers referred to the study subjects' electronic health records up until 2017 to see if they were ever diagnosed with dementia.

For the analysis, the research team focused on the relationships between social contact at age 50, 60 and 70, and subsequent incidence of dementia, and whether social contact was linked to cognitive decline, after accounting for other factors such as education, employment, marital status and socioeconomic status.

The researchers found that increased social contact at age 60 is associated with a significantly lower risk of developing dementia later in life. The analysis showed that someone who saw friends almost daily at age 60 was 12% less likely to develop dementia than someone who only saw one or two friends every few months.

They found similarly strong associations between social contact at ages 50 and 70 and subsequent dementia; while those associations did not reach statistical significance, the researchers say that social contact at any age may well have a similar impact on reducing dementia risk.

Social contact in mid to late life was similarly correlated with general cognitive measures.

Short exercise boosts memory

Researchers discover a gene in mice that's activated by brief periods of exercise

Date: July 2, 2019

Source:

Oregon Health & Science University

Summary:

Neuroscientists, working with mice, have discovered that a short burst of exercise directly boosts the function of a gene that increases connections between neurons in the hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with learning and memory.

  

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Neuroscientists at OHSU in Portland, Oregon, working with mice, have discovered that a short burst of exercise directly boosts the function of a gene that increases connections between neurons in the hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with learning and memory.

The research is published online in the journal eLife.

"Exercise is cheap, and you don't necessarily need a fancy gym membership or have to run 10 miles a day," said co-senior author Gary Westbrook, M.D., senior scientist at the OHSU Vollum Institute and Dixon Professor of Neurology in the OHSU School of Medicine.

Previous research in animals and in people shows that regular exercise promotes general brain health. However, it's hard to untangle the overall benefits of exercise to the heart, liver and muscles from the specific effect on the brain. For example, a healthy heart oxygenates the whole body, including the brain.

"Previous studies of exercise almost all focus on sustained exercise," Westbrook said. "As neuroscientists, it's not that we don't care about the benefits on the heart and muscles but we wanted to know the brain-specific benefit of exercise."

So the scientists designed a study in mice that specifically measured the brain's response to single bouts of exercise in otherwise sedentary mice that were placed for short periods on running wheels. The mice ran a few kilometers in two hours.

The study found that short-term bursts of exercise -- the human equivalent of a weekly game of pickup basketball, or 4,000 steps -- promoted an increase in synapses in the hippocampus. Scientists made the key discovery by analyzing genes that were increased in single neurons activated during exercise.

Celebrating the history and meaning of LGBTQ Pride Month

This June, the LGBTQ community holds its annual Pride celebration by commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City. In 1969, a tenacious and determined group from the community, led by drag queens, said no to decades of harassment and imprisonment by the police by fighting back. Three nights of riots sent a powerful message to the world and resulted in the first large-scale march for gay rights the next year. Progress for equality has pushed forward since then, always threatened, however, by forces of hate and intolerance.

In this excerpt from our book, Healing the Brain: Stress, Trauma and LGBTQ Youth, we peel away the confusion and show the reality of minority stress and the gay community. How words and acts of hate literally diminish the physical and mental health of this targeted group.

Order your copy here.

Unique to the LGBT form of minority stress—as opposed to minority stress engendered by societal prejudice based upon race, ethnicity, gender, or disability—is that one's sexual orientation usually is invisible to others. As a result, in addition to being the target of overt discrimination, LGBT individuals are constantly subject to subtle, inadvertent, or insensitive attacks on the core of their very nature, even by people who profess no disdain or disrespect for them.

For instance, if someone has a lesbian colleague but doesn't know the colleague's orientation, an innocent question—such as asking her if she has a boyfriend, rather than asking “Are you seeing someone special?”—implies a judgment regarding what is “normal.” When the “other” is invisible, faceless, or nameless, it is common for those in power to ignore the reality of the other's existence and the challenges the other faces. This interplay of power and prejudice, whether overt or covert, constitutes the phenomenon of heterosexism. Similarities to the racism and sexism so prevalent during the civil rights movements of past generations are obvious.

Internalizing Predjudice

This sexual-minority status, as explained by Riggle and Rostosky, is defined by a culture of devaluation, including overt and subtle prejudice and discrimination, [one that] creates and reinforces the chronic, everyday stress that interferes with optimal human development and well-being.

LGBT individuals, stigmatized by negative societal attitudes directed at the essence of their being, struggle on a daily basis to balance the dual dangers of publicly engaging their need for equality and validation and remaining closeted to find some calm through an escape from public scrutiny. Many gay persons internalize such discrimination and prejudice. Fractured social-support mechanisms and minority-stress–associated low self-esteem contribute to a high prevalence of self-destructive behaviors, such as substance abuse, suicide, and risky sexual behavior. Order Here!

Your genes are more than your ancestry

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Chapter Two

Genes and Your Brain

Before there was “23 and Me” and Ancestry.com, there was James D. Watson and Francis Crick and the double helix. While we can learn about our heritage via our genes, understanding our genetic make-up is already leading to greater understanding, treatments, and possible cures for brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and stroke.

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James D. Watson (pictured) and Francis Crick won the Nobel prize in 1953 for discovering the “double helix” structure of DNA, showing how a great amount of genetic information can be compactly stored in each cell and replicated easily.

The human genome, whose mapping and sequencing was initially completed in 2003 and revised since, is the blueprint for homo sapiens. The genome contains the complete instruction manual for building a human being from our approximately 20,000 genes. Wrapped tightly in a spiral ladder of DNA, our genes are found in the nucleus of each of the 37.2 trillion cells in our bodies (except mature red blood cells).

At least 30 percent of the different genes that make us human are expressed in the brain and spinal cord (the central nervous system). By far this is the highest proportion of genes expressed in any area of our bodies. Far more than just determining our height and hair color or telling us where our ancestors lived, our genes (“nature”) influence the development and function of the brain, and control how we think, move, and behave. Having said that, our genes are not our destiny. Combined with the effects of “nurture,” changes in these genes can also determine whether we are at risk for a particular disease and if we are, how it might develop.

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Will you get Alzheimer's?

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