News & Headlines

Anjali Verma was sitting in the gymnasium, fluorescent lights beaming down, Advanced Placement test booklet open—and she found that she couldn’t remember anything about physics. Everything looked too small; she had no idea what she was reading. Her head was pounding. The day before, guarding the lacrosse goal, she’d taken two hits to the head. The first happened during warm-ups. The shot came from just 4 feet away. Even though she was wearing a helmet, she remembers crying from the impact.

Anyone who plays or watches hockey knows it's a contact sport. But a first-of-its-kind study is now proving just how easy it is to develop chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. The brain disease is often associated with football, but the new research out of Boston University and it's leading CET Center found a hockey player's odds increase a whopping 34% every year they play.

Basketball is a sport that Troy Akins loves, but it doesn’t come without a potential for injury. “We were at practice playing fives and I got elbowed in the head. It hurt for a second but it went away as my adrenaline was running,” Akins said who’s a Woodland Hills junior. By the next day, he was dizzy and pulled from the big game.

As organs go, the human brain is an odd one. It’s remarkably big relative to our bodies, for starters. It’s also wrinklier than most, with a complex, folded surface making space for the tens of billions of interconnected neurons that give rise to our species’ unique cognitive powers. Oh, and it’s jiggly — like, really jiggly.

A new study from researchers at the Boston University Alzheimer's Disease and CTE Center is helping solve the mystery as to why the brain shrinks in a unique pattern, known as atrophy, in chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Published in Acta Neuropathologica, this research provides novel evidence that cumulative repetitive head impacts are driving the specific patterns of brain degeneration found at the base of the folds of the surface of the brain, known as the cortical sulcus.

For the first time since the 1960s, the Department of Veterans Affairs is studying whether a psychedelic substance is effective for treating mental health conditions — specifically, post-traumatic stress disorder or alcoholism.

Biomarker tests could help to diagnose people with mild traumatic brain injury when scans show nothing.

When Steven Simpson left the army after serving in Iraq, he spiralled into depression and was diagnosed with PTSD before finding the help he needed.

A Harvard University survey reveals that one-third of former professional football players believe they have chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by concussions and repeated head hits. The study, published in JAMA Neurology, is one of the largest to date on former NFL players' perceptions of their cognitive health and symptoms linked to CTE. Out of 1,980 respondents, 681 believed they had CTE, while over 230 had experienced suicidal thoughts and 176 had a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease or dementia.

In Waves and Warn tells the story of Navy SEALS who are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan time and time again, only to return stateside and experience a different type of war: a battle on their bodies and brains. The documentary, which premiered at the DOC NYC film festival, reveals how nightmares, explosive outbursts, severe pain, alcoholism and depression consumed the lives of these wartime heroes. Hopelessness and suicidal thoughts were the only way out, until they discovered an experimental treatment called ibogaine.

A study led by the University of Glasgow has revealed differences in the brains of pediatric and adult patients that might explain the sometimes catastrophic outcomes seen in children following a traumatic brain injury.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham (U.K.) discovered an approach for treating mild traumatic brain injuries using photobiomodulation (PBM; see video)—also known as low-level laser therapy, which can increase cellular metabolism and stimulate cells and tissues. The team’s now-patented approach relies on red and near-infrared (near-IR) light in the 600- to 1000-nm wavelength range, where it can be absorbed by cytochrome-c oxidase, the main light-sensitive molecule in mitochondria. This aids cellular respiration, the formation of adenosine triphosphate (ATP; an energy source essential for healthy brain function) molecules, modulation of oxidative stress, and reduced free radical production. It also triggers cell signaling and gene transcription.