College Football Players Have Noticeable Changes in Their Brains and Slower Reaction Times

The University of Tulsa conducted a study of 50 participants to examine football, concussions, and their effect on brain regions involved with memory functions. A Tulsa faculty member involved in the study said the results were "astounding."

Researchers at the university gathered 50 participants - 25 football players with  a history of concussions and 25 students who never played football before. They sought to analyze the hippocampus region of the brain, which is one of the first regions to suffer memory loss when damaged.

Concussions have been a recent hot button topic, especially for football players. The high contact sport has resulted in countless injuries and a number of deaths due to brain injury. The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) filed a concussion lawsuit against the National Football League (NFL) and ended up settling for $765 million to compensate victims, provide proper medical procedures for retired players, and underwrite research.

"Other studies have evaluated the effects on older athletes, such as retired NFL players, but no one has studied 20-year-olds until now - and the results were astounding," said Patrick S.F. Bellgowan, study researcher and faculty member at Tulsa, in this CBS Sports article. "The next step is to assess what caused this difference in hippocampus size."

The researchers found that there was a significant inverse relationship of concussion and years of football played with hippocampal volume. According to scholarpedia, "the hippocampus is a part of the forebrain, located in the medial temporal lobe, and acts as the brain's search engine." As hippocampal volume decreases, its ability to consolidate memory becomes less effective.

Concussions didn't even need to play a role in hippocampal volume. The football players studied were found to possess a smaller hippocampal volume with and without a history of concussion compared to the students who never played football. Years of participation in football were also associated with a slower reaction time compared to the students.

The study, "Relationship of Collegiate Football Experience and Concussion With Hippocampal Volume and Cognitive Outcomes," was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association today.