Soccer headers may damage this part of the brain and lead to memory issues

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Photo by Constantin Shim on Unsplash
Photo by Constantin Shim on Unsplash

Heading the ball in soccer may be damaging an area at the front of the brain where the grey and white matter meet called the 'orbitofrontal gray matter–white matter interface (GWI)'. The US study of 352 adult amateur soccer players found that those who had headed the ball more often had changes to this brain region, which helped explain their poorer performance on a memory test in which they had to remember a shopping list of items.

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JAMA Network Open
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Organisation/s: Columbia University, USA
Funder: Dr R. B. Lipton reported receiving research grants from AbbVie (Allergan), Biohaven, ElectroCore, Eli Lilly, the US Food and Drug Administration, Lundbeck, Pfizer, and Teva; serving on the editorial board of Neurology; being senior advisor for Headache; being an associate editor for Cephalalgia; reviewing for the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; holding stock and stock options in Axon, Biohaven Holdings, CoolTech, and Manistee; serving as a consultant, being an advisory board member, or receiving honoraria from AbbVie (Allergan), American Academy of Neurology, American Headache Society, Amgen, Axon, Axsome, Biohaven, Biovision, Boston Scientific, Clexio, Dr. Reddy’s (Promius), Electrocore, Eli Lilly, eNeura Therapeutics, Equinox, GlaxoSmithKline, Grifols, Karuna, Lundbeck (Alder), Manistee, Pfizer, Satsuma, Scilex, ShiraTronics, Supernus, Teva, Tonix, and Trigemina; and receiving royalties from Oxford Press University forWolff’s Headache and Other Head Pain 7th and 8th editions, Wiley, and Informa. Dr M. L. Lipton reported receiving royalties from Springer Publishers, personal fees for serving as an expert witness, nonfinancial research support from GE, and personal fees from serving on a medical advisory board for bioMérieux outside the submitted work and having a patent for EZ-MAP quantitative image processing issued. No other disclosures were reported.
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