FLICKR, PENN STATEThe National Institutes of Health (NIH) is awarding two $6-million grants and six smaller awards to research teams that aim to better understand the effects of traumatic injury on the human brain. Two large cooperative agreements will focus on “defining the scope of long-term changes that occur in the brain years after a head injury or after multiple concussions,” according to an NIH statement, while the six pilot projects “are designed to provide support for the early stages of sports-related concussion projects.”
The funds are provided by the Sports and Health Research Program, a partnership of the NIH, the National Football League (NFL), and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, to which the NFL donated $30 million in 2012.
“We need to be able to predict which patterns of injury are rapidly reversible and which are not,” Story Landis, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), said in the statement. “This program will help researchers get closer to answering some of the important questions about concussion for our youth who play sports and their parents.”
The effects of repeated head trauma have received much attention in the past year. In the summer of 2012, former NFL players sued the league, claiming ...
