Our culture seems obsessed with violent sports…Don’t mess with a brain!”

Ques­tion by Janet: Giv­en the grow­ing con­cern about sports-relat­ed con­cus­sions, what do you think schools should be doing? abol­ish or severe­ly reduce var­si­ty teams? spon­sor only “safe” sports? Is there research on how con­cus­sions may inter­fere with learn­ing and aca­d­e­m­ic results? Answer by Dr. Robert Syl­west­er: I don’t know how to respond respon­si­bly to your question,…

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Brain Training News Digest

Here is a news digest on brain train­ing to start your stim­u­lat­ing New Year: Brain train­ing games: Do they work? This piece explores the world of com­put­er­ized brain train­ing soft­ware: Who uses them? Are they worth the expense? You can also check out Sharp­brains Pro­gram Eval­u­a­tion check­list to learn about the 10 ques­tions to ask when…

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Football: Even “minor” hits can cause brain damage

Today the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Neu­rol­o­gy (AAN) “is call­ing for any ath­lete who is sus­pect­ed of hav­ing a con­cus­sion to be removed from play until the ath­lete is eval­u­at­ed by a physi­cian with train­ing in the eval­u­a­tion and man­age­ment of sports con­cus­sion.” At the same time, an arti­cle in Sports Illus­trat­ed reports a new study in…

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Head Games and neuropsychological assessments

You may have seen this insigh­ful OpEd last Fri­day in the New York Times, by clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Ger­ald Tra­mon­tano: Head Games — “CHILDREN aged 5 to 18 suf­fer at least 96,000 sports-relat­ed con­cus­sions every year in the Unit­ed States, the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion esti­mates. Even more trou­bling, as many as 20 percent…

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