Houston Texans vs. Dallas CowboysWIKIMEDIA, AJ GUELIn May 2012, former National Football League (NFL) player Junior Seau shot himself in the chest. An autopsy, conducted by the National Institutes of Health, revealed that Seau suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)—a condition where repeated blows to the head, even mild ones, can trigger the progressive loss of brain tissue. He was the latest of a number of former athletes who have taken their own lives and were the discovered to have the neurological hallmarks of the disease. The string of suicides has pushed awareness of CTE to fever pitch, and earlier this week, the NFL and General Electric jointly pledged $60 million over 4 years to research on diagnosing and treating brain trauma.
CTE has a long history. It was first documented in the 1920s by New Jersey medical examiner Harrison Martland, who noticed that boxers slowly developed a form of dementia after repeated blows to the head. Described initially as “punch drunk” or “dementia pugilistica,” the condition was later renamed as CTE after researchers realized that it could be caused by activities other than boxing. The recent discovery that young athletes can also suffer from the condition has spurred a surge of interest. “The field has exploded,” said Ann McKee from Boston University. “It can’t believe what’s happened in 5 years.”
Since 2008, McKee and colleagues a “brain bank” at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE), based at Boston University School of Medicine, have ...
