Con­cus­sion effect ‘spans decades’ (BBC)

- “Peo­ple con­cussed in their youth show sub­tle signs of men­tal and phys­i­cal prob­lems even more than 30 years later, say Cana­dian researchers.”

- “Dr Louis de Beau­mont, who led the study, said: “This study shows that the effects of sports con­cus­sions in early adult­hood per­sist beyond 30 years post-concussion, and that it can cause cog­ni­tive and motor func­tion alter­ations as the ath­letes age.”

- “Ath­letes should be bet­ter informed about the cumu­la­tive and per­sis­tent effects of sports con­cus­sion on men­tal and phys­i­cal processes so they know about the risk asso­ci­ated with return­ing to their sport.”

The study in question:

De Beau­mont L, The­o­ret H, Mon­geon D at al. Brain func­tion decline in healthy retired ath­letes who sus­tained their last sports con­cus­sion in early adult­hood. Brain 2009, Advanced online pub­li­ca­tion Jan­u­ary 27

Given the impor­tance of this topic, which we cov­ered in our 2008 Mar­ket Research, we are happy to read about new resources like a new book titled Sports Neu­ropsy­chol­ogy: Assess­ment and Man­age­ment of Trau­matic Brain Injury

From a recent book review by Gary S. Solomon, Ph.D.:

- “The past 15 years has yielded an explo­sion of infor­ma­tion on the topic of con­cus­sive injuries in sports, both in the pub­lic press and in the pro­fes­sional lit­er­a­ture. In 2005 the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol con­cluded that con­cus­sion in sports was of “epi­demic” pro­por­tion and esti­mated that 1.6 to 3.8 mil­lion cases of sports-related con­cus­sions occur annu­ally in the United States.”

- “Sec­tion four is an overview of the four most fre­quently uti­lized com­put­er­ized neu­rocog­ni­tive plat­forms for assess­ing the cog­ni­tive effects of sports con­cus­sion, and includes overviews (writ­ten in part by the devel­op­ers) of CogSport, The Head­Min­der Con­cus­sion Res­o­lu­tion Index, ImPACT, and Auto­mated Neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal Met­rics (ANAM) Sports Med­i­cine Battery.”

The book Sports Neu­ropsy­chol­ogy: Assess­ment and Man­age­ment of Trau­matic Brain Injury

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