Pro Athletes Brain Health Study: The First 10 Years (Podcast)

The Professional Athletes Brain Health Study, launched by Cleveland Clinic in 2011, examines the cumulative effects of repetitive concussions and subconcussive impacts to the brain in active and retired athletes exposed to repetitive head injuries, including professional fighters and bull riders.

“Chronic traumatic encephalopathy has been most associated with professional football players, but you can see it in any of these contact sports,” says Charles Bernick, MD, MPH, a neurologist in Cleveland Clinic’s Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas and one of the study’s principal investigators. “The problem is that we just know very little about it.”

In the latest episode of Cleveland Clinic’s Neuro Pathways podcast, Dr. Bernick discusses findings from the first decade of the longitudinal study and what’s on the horizon. He delves into:

• Origins of the study, which began as the Professional Fighters Brain Health Study
• Tests that participants undergo, including MRIs, behavioral health questionnaires, cognitive testing and speech samples
• Functional and structural changes in the brain caused by repetitive head injuries
• Potential expansion of the study to include an autopsy component and exploration of socioeconomic and psychosocial influences
• The role of biomarkers and genetic factors
• Ideas to prevent head injuries and subsequent long-term effects

Click the podcast player above to listen to the 24-minute episode now, or read on for a short edited excerpt. Check out more Neuro Pathways episodes at clevelandclinic.org/neuropodcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Excerpt from the podcast

Dr. Bernick: In our active fighters we see most of the volumetric changes in the thalamus and corpus callosum — these deep structures that either carry a lot of fibers or are connected to a lot of fibers. Yet in the retired fighters the changes we see over time are in the hippocampus and the amygdala.

As a result, we think there may be, in some sense, two things that we are seeing. In active fighters we’re seeing just the result of axonal injury, whereas in retired fighters, those who show progressive decline in the hippocampus and amygdala may have the development of a neurodegenerative process. And we are trying to actually develop some type of classifier using a variety of MRI measures to be able to predict who may actually be on a progressive disease course.