Athletes' brains show effects of concussions

The NFL has long downplayed the effects of concussions. When players like Ted Johnson spoke about it they were often dismissed as players with an axe to grind or many would say it was the price they paid for playing and getting well-paid to play a violent sport. One of the problems with concussions is that they are impossible to to test -- no MRI, no CT scan can detect it. That's one reason that coaches and the NFL have been reluctant and/or skeptical about how badly a player is injured who has suffered a concussion. The NFL acknowledges that many players suffer concussions but the NFL indicated that their staffs take a cautious, conservative approach to managing concussions. While they support research into the impact of concussions, they maintain that, "Hundreds of thousands of people have played football and other sports without experiencing any problem of this type and there continues to be considerable debate within the medical community on the precise long-term effects of concussions and how they relate to other risk factors."
The NFL is planning its own study of the effects of concussions on former players, hopefully it will provide better answers than what the NFL provides players who are trying to get workmans' comp. There are literally hundreds of stories of NFL players who have gotten nothing from the NFL after their careers were over.

Several former players including Tennessee Titan Frank Wychek and New England Patriot Ted Johnson So far, around 100 athletes have consented to have their brains studied after they die. Johnson was one of the first to sign up. He said he believes that concussions he suffered while playing football explain the anger, depression and throbbing headaches that occasionally still plague him.
Johnson said he played through concussions because he, like many other NFL athletes, did not understand the consequences. He has publicly criticized the NFL for not protecting players like him.
"They don't want you to know," said Johnson. "It's not like when you get into the NFL there's a handout that says 'These are the effects of multiple concussions so beware.' " Johnson also describes what his life was like trying to deal with the effects of several concussions.

I'd go see my kids for maybe 15 minutes," said Johnson. "Then I would go back home and close the curtains, turn the lights off and I'd stay in bed. That was my routine for two years.
"Those were bad days."

From CNN:

"Today, using tissue from retired NFL athletes culled posthumously, the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE), at the Boston University School of Medicine, is shedding light on what concussions look like in the brain. The findings are stunning. Far from innocuous, invisible injuries, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. That damage has a name: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

researchers at the CSTE released a study about the sixth documented case of CTE in former NFL player Tom McHale, who died in 2008 at the age of 45, and the youngest case to date, an 18-year-old multi-sport athlete who suffered multiple concussions.
While CTE in an ex-NFL player's brain may have been expected, the beginnings of brain damage in an 18-year-old brain was a "shocking" finding, according to Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts, and co-director of the CSTE.
"We think this is how chronic traumatic encephalopathy starts," said McKee. "This is speculation, but I think we can assume that this would have continued to expand."
CTE has thus far been found in the brains of six out of six former NFL players.
"What's been surprising is that it's so extensive," said McKee. "It's throughout the brain, not just on the superficial aspects of the brain, but it's deep inside."
CSTE studies reveal brown tangles flecked throughout the brain tissue of former NFL players who died young -- some as early as their 30s or 40s.
McKee, who also studies Alzheimer's disease, says the tangles closely resemble what might be found in the brain of an 80-year-old with dementia.
"I knew what traumatic brain disease looked like in the very end stages, in the most severe cases," said McKee. "To see the kind of changes we're seeing in 45-year-olds is basically unheard of."
The damage affects the parts of the brain that control emotion, rage, hypersexuality, even breathing, and recent studies find that CTE is a progressive disease that eventually kills brain cells."