News & Headlines

Sweeping new efforts to protect the brain health of service members, including stricter safety standards for existing and new weapons, were included in the annual defense policy bill approved by Congress this month. Under the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, which is expected to be signed into law before the end of the month, existing weapons would have to be modified to reduce blast exposure both for those using the weapons and those standing close by, and future weapons systems would have to be developed with brain safety in mind.

Sometimes it takes a good story to get people’s attention. That’s what University of Oregon (UO) researchers found when they launched a study on the most effective ways to get parents to take notice of the high risk of childhood concussions in sports, and what needs to be done to prevent injuries. Two UO associate professors from the school of journalism and communication noticed many parents disregard the warnings about concussions when it comes to their children participating in school sports.

Unable to find effective treatments at home, veterans with brain-injury symptoms are going abroad for psychedelics like ibogaine that are illegal in the U.S.

While helping with a training activity at the Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System, Donnamarie Lovestrand saw more than a decade of inquiry put into practice. That inquiry began in 2011 when Lovestrand, now an associate professor of nursing at Pennsylvania College of Technology, was a staff nurse in the post-anesthesia care unit of Bayne-Jones Army Community Hospital at Fort Polk (now Fort Johnson) in Louisiana. “It was not infrequent that I would have these soldiers who would wake up (from anesthesia) hallucinating that they were back on the battlefield – and there was nothing we could do to turn them around,” she said.

Nearly a quarter of women experience physical abuse from partners, and up to 90% of those women have had at least one concussion. Most don’t get screened or diagnosed.

After years of back and forth, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a clinical trial to determine whether cannabis helps veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). FDA Approves Cannabis Study for Veterans with PTSD This critical multi-state study, dubbed MJP2, will include more than 300 participants. The researchers argue it will connect the dots between real-world cannabis use and scientific theory. This connection could bring hope to the thousands of veterans struggling with PTSD. The FDA’s Division of Psychiatry Products greenlit the study after a hold in 2021 over regulatory concerns. But MAPS appealed the decision, which paved the way for the recent approval.

A new study out of Boston University’s CTE Center found an increased risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in male hockey players the longer they played the game.

Washington Commanders running back Austin Ekeler detailed the symptoms he has experienced following his second concussion of the season in his first interview since the injury occurred in Week 12 against the Dallas Cowboys.

A confidential Navy program is studying whether intense fighter jet operations can cause devastating brain injuries in flight crews.

As anyone on the medical side of hockey will tell you, no two concussions are the same. No two people are the same so it makes perfect sense. How a player reacts to a blow to the head or a concussion or even to repeated concussions varies from player to player.

What all players have in common is the will. The desire to keep going in spite of injury or whatever other obstacles stand in their way.

Researchers from the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) analyzed the brain MRIs of 352 amateur soccer players, aged 18 to 53, both men and women. They discovered abnormalities in the white matter surrounding the brain, particularly in the frontal lobe, similar to CTE.

The “brain fog” of long COVID might be due to impaired lung function following a person’s infection, a new small-scale study says. Reduced gas exchange in the lungs – oxygen coming in, carbon dioxide going out -- appears to be associated with brain fog in long COVID, researchers will report in Chicago at next week’s annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.