My Summer Research Background

The popular premise explored through this research is one of personal significance to me as I suffered many concussions playing the sport in question: youth football. Clearly, professional football has seen an upheaval in values, regulations, and culture in the last decade in response to unprecedented media exposure regarding horrific neurological outcomes in former NFL stars. Indeed, Chronic Traumatic Encephaly (CTE) has become integrated among the national vocabulary and awareness, and youth football participation has seen high rates of decline in response. I began my journey into football before this hysteria and as such, there was no great focus on the long-term effects of Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). I can recall (hazily) many times as a youth seeing a variety of stars and colors, feeling dizzy, and even experiencing momentary lapses in consciousness in response to head impacts throughout my youth football experience. It seems this accumulation of mTBI led directly to my many and often extreme-symptomed concussions in high school, for which I missed two full seasons’ worth of games. My struggle with these head injuries (which continued into the spring of 2022 when I took a pitch to the head in my third baseball game as a Pomona-Pitzer Sagehen) has thankfully driven me down a course of interest in neuroscience with a particular focus on mTBI.

The “Protect the Player, Protect the Game” NIH funded study has emerged in response to many stories similar to mine and particularly in response to the many worried parents who fear they may be risking their child’s future by allowing him to play the sport of football (e.g. my poor mother). It has also emerged thanks to the foresight and innovation from one of our head researcher’s Dr. Kei Kawata who began exploring the nature and consequences of subconcussive impacts on football players. The media coverage of CTE and its prevalence in NFL players is inherently sensationalist as is any attempt at popular-press journalism in the 21st century digital world. In fact, the narratives pushed in the media frenzy have no empirical validation from any controlled, experimental research and are really more based on pseudoscientific, anecdotal evidence. As someone who has benefited extensively from the beautiful (although gruesome) sport of football and the invaluable lessons it provides in teamwork, persistence, and grit, I feel strongly that the sport must not be abandoned solely upon the basis of fear. This sentiment is shared by many in academia who feel both attachment to the sport and also a strong sense of trepidation toward the health of our youth. As such, our team is geared toward answering three key questions related to the kind of subconcussive head impacts most commonly sustained by high school football players: (1) How many head impacts are safe to sustain during a youth career? (2) What aspects of brain function are most susceptible to these head impacts? (3) How do frequency and intensity of practice drills relate to brain burden? Answers to these gaps in our current knowledge will be profound for millions of parents and kids. For the first time, we will be able to guide parents and children with scientifically-validated approaches to football and other high contact sports such as hockey and lacrosse. Indeed, the increase in concussion awareness alone has not reduced their impact upon our youth population: “Between 1.7 and 3 million sports- and recreation-related concussions happen each year. Around 300,000 of those are from football. 5 in 10 concussions go unreported or undetected (UPMC, 2022).” Therefore, the need for operationalized and data-driven policies related to youth head impacts is immediate.

Dr. Kawata (left) pictured here in the early days of data analysis of this four year, longitudinal study.