Soccer moms should be concerned: heading a soccer ball may have long term effects on memory, attention and visual skills, finds a study by researchers at the Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center (GMRRC), Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, reports Gretchen Reynolds of the NY Times.
The study recruited 32 adults, all of whom had played soccer since childhood and now compete in amateur soccer leagues; researchers examined brain scans using a new MRI technique, called diffusion tensor imaging, that can show structural changes in the brain.
Players who headed the ball 1,100 times or more in the past year showed significant loss of white matter (the communication wiring that relays messages) in the parts of the brain involved with memory, attention, and the processing of visual information.
The study, led by Dr. Michael L. Lipton, associate director of GMRRC, was presented at the Radiological Society of North America meeting last month.
Many questions, however, remain — especially about the impact of heading in young players, which has not to date been studied. “On the one hand, kids’ brains are developing fast, so they might experience more problems” than adults, Dr. Lipton says. “On the other hand, their brains are renowned for their plasticity, so maybe they’ll recover better. We just don’t know.”
Elizabeth Larson, a researcher at Humboldt State University and director of the California North Coast Concussion Program, carefully tracked the heading history and cognitive health of 51 male and female soccer players at the school, a Division II program, over the course of a full collegiate season. She found that the players who headed the ball most often during the season, whether in practices or games, performed significantly worse on tests of visual memory, including the ability to recall shapes and images, than they had at the start of the season. Those players also reported more headaches and episodes of dizziness than other players.
She recommends some preemptive steps, based on the current science: “There is a growing consensus that kids younger than 12 shouldn’t be heading,” and parents should monitor the number of heading repetitions and any accompanying symptoms in older children. Ask your child if he or she experiences headaches or dizziness after practice and, if so, “check with the coach about reducing the frequency of heading drills.
Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.
Soccer head injuries are very very painful, my friend have suffered from it, and I pray that nobody should ever suffer from it.
Posted by: soccer academies | 01/24/2012 at 04:15 AM