Archive for 2010

Does the brain have a mind of its own? It might explain why we say– and do– things we know we shouldn’t! Larry talks to Dr. Julian Bailes to find out.

“Nightline Prime,” a new primetime series, premieres Thursday, Aug. 19, with the first of four installments of “Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do.”

The series explores the mystery and the science of the brain through a range of extraordinary case studies. Each installment focuses on a different research area, including love’s impact on the brain, violence and the brain, medical emergencies involving the brain, and food and the brain.

The brain of the late Cincinnati Bengals pass receiver Chris Henry contained so many signs of chronic disease — sludge, tangles and threads associated with late-in-life dementia or Alzheimer’s — that it shows a football player can sustain life-altering head trauma without ever being diagnosed with a concussion.
Click to read more. courtesy of post-gazette.com

If the disturbing findings during the autopsy of former West Virginia and Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry tell us one thing, it’s that the prevention of brain injuries among athletes in contact sports still has a way to go.
Click to read full story courtesy of the Wheeling News Register.

Doctors found evidence of brain damage, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, that has been observed in retired players who’ve had many concussions. Unlike those older players, Henry was 26 when he died.
Click to read full story courtesy of CNN.com

This is rapidly shaping up as a public health crisis among a decent-sized segment of the population, and Henry is now its seminal figure. Here’s why: The Henry findings indicate the crisis extends not only to longtime NFL players but to an unimaginable amount of young men as well.
Click to read Full story courtesy of [...]

Nobody wants to hear what doctors discovered about the damage to the late Chris Henry’s brain, but we all need to listen and reconsider the danger in the game of football, Johnette Howard writes. Story

“We would have been very happy if the results had been negative, but multiple areas of Chris Henry’s brain showed CTE,” said Julian Bailes, director of BIRI and chairman of neurosurgery at West Virginia. Bailes and his colleagues presented results of their forensic examination at a news conference Monday afternoon.
Click to Read Full Article Courtesy [...]

Abstract: We present 5 cases of professional American contact sport athletes who committed parasuicides and suicides aged 50, 45, 44, 36, and 40 years old. Full forensic autopsies and immunohistochemical analyses of the brains revealed chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The brains appeared grossly normal at autopsy without gross evidence of remote traumatic injuries or neurodegenerative disease. Brain immunohistochemical analyses revealed widespread cerebral taupathy in the form of neurofibrillary tangles and neuritic threads without neuritic amyloid plaques. CTE refers to chronic cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms of chronic neurodegeneration following a single episode of severe traumatic brain injury or repeated episodes of mild traumatic brain injury.

On Monday, February 1st, 2010, Dr. Bennet Omalu spoke before House Judiciary Committee members at a forum in Houston, TX with regard to “Head and Other Injuries in Youth, High School, College, and Professional Football.” Below are his written remarks. You can also download it here.
Bennet Omalu, Brain Injury Research Institute
Good afternoon Chairman Conyers, Ranking Member [...]