News & Headlines

Bryan Doerries was first exposed to Greek drama at the tender age of 7 when he played one of the children in Euripides' "Medea" at Christopher Newport University. The following year he played the boy who leads the blind prophet, Tiresias, in Sophocles' "Oedipus," also at CNU.

The helmet sits under glass at the headquarters of the football players union, memorializing the play-at-all-costs warrior who strapped it on every Sunday. Four swaths of duct tape suture the crown. Screws are broken, the enamel is cracked, and two Raiders logos cling for dear life. During his 15 years as an N.F.L. lineman, this was the only helmet Gene Upshaw wore.

As the president of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the daughter of their owner, Gay Culverhouse was the woman in the men's locker room. Twenty years later, she is trying to keep her former players out of the emergency room.

The commissioner of the N.F.L. faced heated criticism Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, with lawmakers, former players and even a former team executive accusing the league of neglect in its handling of active and retired players with brain injuries.

A concussion happens when the brain is shaken, often in a car crash or a fall or a strike to the head in sports. Concussions can be mild, but doctors order a CT scan to look for a more serious injury. Computed tomography provides a detailed image of the brain. but a recent study warned that more children than necessary are being exposed to radiation this way.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell plans to tell Congress that the league will offer free follow-up medical work to 56 players who reported dementia, Alzheimer's disease or other memory-related problems in a recent survey that helped spark a hearing Wednesday on head injuries.

The NFL and its doctors have consistently dismissed independent studies showing unusual cognitive decline in former players. They insist that a long-term study by the league's committee on concussions, expected to be published in several years, will be the authoritative analysis.

When 29-year-old Wendy Moore died from brain injuries suffered in a skiing accident in 1997, her family looked for a lasting memorial for the young woman.

The NFL and high school football have come into focus in the traumatic brain injury world lately, as studies pile up demonstrating the serious risk of degenerative brain disease to players who suffer multiple concussions.

Neurons are structurally complex, with specific parts of the cell responsible for information input and other parts responsible for information output. When neurons lose the ability to distinguish between inputs and outputs, the nervous system stops working.

When a survey commissioned by the National Football League recently indicated that dementia or similar memory-related diseases had been diagnosed in its retired players vastly more often than in the national population, the league claimed the study was unreliable.

Michelle Scruggs says she broke her back playing soccer but never worried about brain damage from heading the ball.

The government of British Columbia, Canada will announce today that it's expanding a promising program designed to prevent shaken baby deaths and injuries.

New research suggests a tailored approach to physical therapy after a neurological injury such as a stroke, traumatic brain injury or spinal cord injury could help restore a wider variety of functions.

In 2006, ABC News correspondent and television anchorman Bob Woodruff was wounded while covering the war in Iraq. He suffered a traumatic brain injury and was not expected to survive. But Woodruff recovered, determined to help other Americans who were similarly wounded in the war.

As doctors begin to test progesterone for traumatic brain injury at sites across the country, researchers are looking ahead to optimizing the hormone's effectiveness.

Felipe Massa will not be racing on Sunday in the Brazilian Grand Prix, which he won last year only to fall a point short of capturing the driver's championship. At the race this weekend in São Paulo, his hometown, he has been given the honor of waving the checkered flag over the winner.

In early September of 2009, The Department of Defense (DOD) Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) hosted the Military Health Research Forum in Kansas City, MO. The forum was dedicated to exploring new research on traumatic brain injury.

Don Lange was serving in the Army in Afghanistan in 2004 when he sustained a traumatic brain injury that left him unable to communicate or feed himself. He was sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center for rehabilitation. He needed help completing simple everyday tasks he had forgotten how to do.

Projected to open in mid 2010, the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE) is a facility dedicated to the study and care of military personnel and veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury and psychological health issues. Using Elekta Neuromag®, an advanced magnetoencephalography device, NICoE plans to shed light on how the brain works after sustaining combat-related injury.

Traumatic brain injury incidents among Ontario construction workers are more likely to occur in the hour before and the hours after lunch break, a new study has found.

In response to a study on NFL player link to Alzheimer's just released, the National Football League announced last week that it is forming a concussion and brain injury committee. With the higher number of dementia noted in a correlational study that was commissioned by the NFL Player Care Foundation, evaluation of several aspects of the game and injury are essential.

Tiffany Verzal framed a home video camera on 14-month-old Alexis, her comatose daughter clinging to life in the intensive care unit of a Texas hospital.

The price appears to be right for former game show host and naval aviator Bob Barker, who donated USD 3 million to help build a premiere Defense Department center for wounded warriors suffering traumatic brain injuries.

Imagine this: One moment the school counselor is saying you're bright enough to skip seventh grade. The next, you're in the hospital with a severe brain injury after being hit by a truck. If you live, you may never be the brightest kid in the class again. It happened 20 years ago to Aaron Norman of Yakima.

Like many veterans, Vietnam vet Mark Lawrence of Rockford deals with post-traumatic stress disorder. But Lawrence has a drug-free way to help him with his PTSD: Katie, his 3-year-old Lakeland terrier. Lawrence is involved with Circle of Change, which pairs rescue dogs with veterans who have PTSD or traumatic brain injuries.

The rookie thought he cost the Titans the game after fumbling a kickoff and muffing a punt, turnovers New York cashed in for 14 points in a 24-17 victory.

When Sean Morey dies, his brain and part of his spinal cord will be shipped to Boston University's Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy.

The military takes the lead in brain trauma research, giving hope to wounded civilians of a 'silent epidemic.'

Moving to a new state and starting a new school is hard. But imagine how much harder it is if you have a parent whose been diagnosed with severe post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury due to serving in a war zone. Anastasia is one of those children.

Matt Birk knows concussions. The Ravens center has had three confirmed in his life, the most recent of which left him in a fog on the sideline of a home game in Minnesota trying to remember how exactly to leave the field.

Football players, parents and coaches are thinking hard this week about the risks associated with playing football, after a Spokane teen died from a concussion.

Florida quarterback Tim Tebow is back home after spending the night in the hospital with a concussion. How long before he plays again is now the big question facing the Gators.

Hundreds of thousands of CT scans are conducted every year on children who have hit their heads. The CT scans have been traditionally used to determine whether or not the children have incurred more serious brain injuries. A recently published study as well as recent discoveries of several more effective methods of diagnosing brain injuries may prove a vast number of CT scans to be unnecessary.

The surest way for motorcycle riders to avoid joining the rapidly growing ranks of fatality statistics — up 144 percent since 1997, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — is to wear proper head protection. A helmet increases the chances of survival in an accident by 37 percent, the safety agency says.

IEDs have now added a new dimension to battlefield injuries.Doctors are seeing an increase in injuries and even deaths among troops who have no external signs of trauma but whose brains have been severely damaged.

There are no official statistics on how many marriages break up after veterans return home from the Iraq war changed. But when a vet returns with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Traumatic Brain Injury, it can put a marriage to the test. The VA Medical Center in La Jolla estimates almost 30 percent of veterans they enroll are diagnosed with PTSD, and 8 percent have TBI.

Brain-damaged by a roadside bomb while covering the war in Iraq in 2006, television newsman Bob Woodruff retold his poignant story Tuesday to a packed Salem State College audience, flanked by his wife, Lee, who shared the emotional hardships she endured during the recovery process.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of children who hit their heads undergo CT scans to rule out the possibility of serious brain injury, but a new study has found that many of the high-radiation scans are unnecessary.

The Daily Telegraph today reported that, "people lying in vegetative states in hospital can still learn" and that this "breakthrough could suggest which patients have the potential to recover from their injuries or illness."

Parents and step-parents who inflict head injuries on their infants are virtually never convicted of the crime unless they plead guilty, a study shows. In most cases prosecutions are never launched.

US Army Major Matt St. Laurent had a long drive back to New Hampshire, and he was on an early flight out of Manchester to Washington the next morning, but he still didn't want to leave Fenway Park the other night.

Cpl. John McClellan has trouble remembering names and uses a Global Positioning System to find his way on unfamiliar streets. Three years ago, he was shot through the head by an enemy sniper while serving as a Marine in Iraq.

Ravens center Matt Birk has agreed to donate his brain and spinal cord tissue to a widening study of brain trauma.

Soldiers returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq suffering from a high rate of traumatic brain injury due to exposure to explosive blasts have prompted research projects to determine exactly how brain injury occurs during an explosion in which direct impact to the head does not occur.