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Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 13: End Of Regulation Play, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 13: End Of Regulation Play, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
In my last column I talked about my skepticism about the relationship between head injuries, CTE, and mental illness. I promised that in this, my last installment in the series, I would elaborate on some of the gaps that need filling. As I endeavor to fulfill that promise, I’ll also provide some perspective for future research.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 12: Grump Factor, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 12: Grump Factor, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
I begin this entry on a sad note. While writing these last two installments in our series concerning CTE and the NFL, I found out about legendary linebacker Junior Seau’s suicide.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 11: Microglial Cells, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 11: Microglial Cells, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
We are trying to understand the biology of CTE at the most intimate level possible, the level of cells and molecules. The last entry dealt with the tau protein and its role in mediating closed-head neural damage. In this installment, let’s consider the role of microglial cells, a little wisp of a cell type with a great big job.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 10: The Tau Of Cte, Continued, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 10: The Tau Of Cte, Continued, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
In our last installment, I wrote about a protein called tau, which necessitated talking about salt. I said that when neurons suffer the types of injury associated with CTE, part of the damage occurs because of a change in salt distribution between the inside of a neuron and its immediate outer exterior.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 9: The Tau Of Cte, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 9: The Tau Of Cte, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
These next two entries all about a protein called tau, which you have probably never heard of before. To understand CTE, however, we need to understand some critical biology surrounding tau. And to do that, we have to discuss something of which you have heard all your life. To talk about tau, we have to talk about salt.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 8: CuttingEdge Nerves, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 8: CuttingEdge Nerves, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
Armed with information from the last installment about nerve cells’ basic biology, we can now talk about how they get injured in a more informed fashion. That’s the subject of this post, and also the next two.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 7: What Mops Have To Do With The Nfl, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 7: What Mops Have To Do With The Nfl, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
In the last few installments, we discussed some vulnerable regions of neurological real estate that suffer damage in afflicted athletes, and their association with changes in outwardly observable behavior. Unfortunately, this is only a partial list. Enough is now known that I could create three or four more installments of this blog and still not cover everything that is being researched.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 6: Memory Loss, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 6: Memory Loss, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
We are in the process of examining the relationship between neurological damage associated with repeated closed-head injuries and the behaviors of CTE. We’ve been using the example of spearing, illustrating the effects of this banned football behavior on the biological integrity of the human brain. We discussed how damage to one such neurological circuit, the Papez Circuit, can lead to chronic changes in mood. Here we discuss changes in three cognitive gadgets: executive function, memory processing, and motor control.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 5: On The Matter Of Damaging Neural Circuits, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 5: On The Matter Of Damaging Neural Circuits, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
In the last installment, we examined the forces capable of causing brain injury, but left out the most important question: What happens to brain tissues unlucky enough to experience those forces? Now it is time to face the biological facts. In this installment, we will talk about neurological tissue and closed-head injuries.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 4: The Physics Of Head Trauma, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 4: The Physics Of Head Trauma, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
One fine afternoon in the autumn of 2010, Minnesota Vikings defensive end Ray Edwards executed one of the most dangerous acts you can do in football: He speared another player.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 3: A History Of Terms – Characteristics Of Cte, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 3: A History Of Terms – Characteristics Of Cte, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
Though repetitive closedhead injuries are often experienced in professional contact sports, many injuries are minor, with collisions involving the head an everyday experience of the sport. Collegiate football players can sustain anywhere from 400 to more than 2,400 head impacts per season, depending upon the player — and possibly his position. The athlete usually walks it off, or is examined and benched for a period of time, lives to play another day. Eventually he joins the NFL, retires, starts endorsing products, and, except for maybe gaining a few pounds, seems to suffer few ill effects.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 2: A History Of Terms – Cte And Concussion, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The Nfl, Part 2: A History Of Terms – Cte And Concussion, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
The history of research into the relationship between head injuries and contact sports starts not with football, but with boxing.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The National Football League, Part 1: An Introduction, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Head Injuries And The National Football League, Part 1: An Introduction, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
This is all about head injuries and the National Football League. I have some mixed feelings writing about this subject mostly because — big surprise — it is not a pretty story.
Brainstorm: Brain Development, Part 2: We’Ve Only Just Begun, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Brain Development, Part 2: We’Ve Only Just Begun, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
This is the second installment of a two-part series briefly summarizing salient characteristics of in utero (literally “in the womb”) human brain development. Here, we will concern ourselves with the nature side of the nature/nurture issue of human behavior.
Brainstorm: Brain Development, Part 1: Of Mops And Brain Cells And Human Behavior, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Brain Development, Part 1: Of Mops And Brain Cells And Human Behavior, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
We have been discussing in equal measure the contributions that both natureand nurture make in the creation of human behavior. In this entry and the next, we are going to focus on the nature side of the discussion, summarizing a few features about how the human brain develops in the womb.
Brainstorm: Of Princesses And Football Players, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Of Princesses And Football Players, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
Sports-related head injuries are getting a lot of press these days. Learning from injuries sustained by prize fighters, hockey players, and American football players, researchers are beginning to understand there are severe consequences to sustained trauma on the mental life of professional athletes — even amateur, Saturdayafternoon athletes. Sports officials could do well to remember the cautionary tale I am about to relate here.
Brainstorm: Of Sign Language And Combat Veterans, Part 2, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Of Sign Language And Combat Veterans, Part 2, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
In the last entry I talked about sign language, and I promised in this space to talk about combat veterans. This entry fulfills the promise (though I am also going to talk about business cards).
Brainstorm: Of Sign Language And Combat Veterans, Part 1, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Of Sign Language And Combat Veterans, Part 1, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
Dr. McNeill has been researching the relationship between verbal and nonverbal communications for most of his career, a subject we began discussing last entry. His work is very relevant to our ongoing conversation about nature, nurture, and human behavior.
Brainstorm: Nature And Nurture And Dogs, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Nature And Nurture And Dogs, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
It is easy to run across the intersection between nature and nurture in the everyday routines of life. You can even find it in a crisis, as the following true story relates.
Brainstorm: Of Weirds And Sushis And People Who Use Chopsticks, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: Of Weirds And Sushis And People Who Use Chopsticks, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
Understanding the contributions that nature and nurture make to a given behavior is tricky business, even for professionals in the field. The research world is littered with heroic, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to tease these apart.
Brainstorm: What Testosterone Has In Common With Schrodinger’S Cat, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: What Testosterone Has In Common With Schrodinger’S Cat, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
People are often startled by the extent to which environment plays a part in mediating the biological processes behind their behaviors.
Brainstorm: A Tale Of Two Video Clips, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: A Tale Of Two Video Clips, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
I have spent a lifetime trying to understand the distance between a gene and a behavior. Using the lens of psychiatric disorders, I’ve spent most of my professional life as a private research consultant, primarily to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, on issues related to mental health. Despite great strides made in the field by literally thousands of colleagues, I am here to report that the rocky terrain between behaviors and genes lies mostly unmapped. For that I blame two video clips, both featuring legendary golfer and famously troubled exhusband, Tiger Woods.
Brainstorm: John J. Medina Biography, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm: John J. Medina Biography, John J. Medina Ph.D.
Brainstorm
John J. Medina, Ph.D., is director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University. He is a developmental molecular biologist whose research interests are focused on the genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders.