Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been receiving extra study in the past few years due to battlefield blast/IED injury as well as football and other sports injuries as early as junior high. The insidious nature of TBI is that long-term effects of accelerated brain aging can appear in those who have mild injuries, or who never experienced the usual symptoms indicating TBI such as dizziness, nausea and disorientation. Researchers have struggled for the reasons why “51 percent of sufferers of mild head injuries were reported as still having disability one year later at follow-up” and why a large proportion of military veterans who sustained mild brain injuries experience the heightened and uncontrollable emotionality of pseudobulbar affect (PBA). This article in the Genetic Literacy Project website works with an earthquake analogy: that there are P-waves (blast pressure) that compress tissues and disrupt neuronal communication, and in the long term accelerate brain aging and cognitive decline. Something sports injury, CTE researchers and research organizations within the military such as DARPA and DoD should be investigating. Hat tip to author and reader Dr Ben Locwin via Twitter.

An abundance of related reading in TTA can be found in searches under TBI and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Also see our 2012 and prior archives for our writing on TBI.