Heading a football 'may lead to brain injury'RSS Feed

Heading a football frequently could cause brain injury, scientists have warned.

Football players who frequently headed the ball exhibited brain abnormalities similar to those found in patients with traumatic brain injury, according to research by the Radiological Society of North America.

The report found that performing more than 1,000 to 1,500 headers per year could cause damage in five regions of the brain which control attention, memory, executive functioning and higher-order visual functions.

Using a magnetic resonance imaging technique, scientists found that water movement in the brain was less uniform in participants who used their head more often.

Martin Lipton, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, said: "Heading a soccer ball is not an impact of a magnitude that will lacerate nerve fibres in the brain."

"But repetitive heading could set off a cascade of responses that can lead to degeneration of brain cells."

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Posted by Matthew Heap
 

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