Common move used in soccer may brain damage akin to CTE: study

Soccer heading may cause more brain damage than previously thought, according to a new study.

Researchers from the Radiological Society of North America looked into the links between one of soccer’s commonplace practices — headbutting the ball — and neurodegenerative diseases such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). 

The study found that soccer players who headed the ball at higher levels exhibited abnormality of the brain’s white matter —- a region of the brain where aberrations indicate severe traumatic brain injuries.

The researchers said most of the damage was found in the frontal lobe of the brain — beneath the part of the skull soccer players are taught to use to head the ball.

“The potential effects of repeated head impacts in sport are much more extensive than previously known and affect locations similar to where we’ve seen CTE pathology,” said the study’s senior author Dr. Michale Lipton, professor of radiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York.

The study claims that noggin knockers cause damage to the white matter near the sulci, which are grooves in the brain’s cerebral cortex.

“Our analysis showed that the white matter abnormalities represent a mechanism by which heading leads to worse cognitive performance,” Dr. Lipton said.

“The abnormalities occur in the locations most characteristic of CTE, are associated with worse ability to learn a cognitive task and could affect function in the future,” Dr. Lipton said in the study.

Most of the over 400 volunteer amateur soccer players and other athletes used for the study had never sustained a concussion or been diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury.

Head-bops that don’t cause immediate traumatic injury can still affect the brain in the long run, according to the researchers.

Previous studies have confirmed that headers have caused injuries to the white matter in soccer players’ brains.

This new study utilized an approach using diffusion MRI technology to analyze the microstructure close to the surface of the brain and draw the new conclusions.