Scotland will become one of the first countries in the world to acknowledge a difference between males and females in national concussion protocol, when new guidelines for sport are announced later this month. The groundbreaking move will see sportscotland refer to studies which identify a variation in risk and recovery. Currently, only Australia and New Zealand mention a difference between the sexes in national concussion guidelines.

Federal health regulators are questioning the safety and evidence behind the first bid to use MDMA, the mind-altering club drug, as a treatment for PTSD, part of a decadeslong effort by advocates to move psychedelic drugs into the medical mainstream. The Food and Drug Administration posted its initial review of the drug Friday, ahead of a meeting of outside advisers who could help decide whether MDMA — currently illegal under federal law — becomes the first drug of its kind to win U.S. approval as a medication.

Some 13% of older adults are diagnosed with traumatic brain injury (TBI), according to a study by UC San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Health Care System. These injuries are typically caused by falls from ground level. Researchers followed about 9,200 Medicare enrollees, whose average age was 75 at the start of the study, and found that contrary to other studies of younger people, being female, white, healthier and wealthier was associated with higher risk of TBI. The study was published in JAMA Network Open on May 31, 2024.

Bessel Van der Kolk, MD (author of The Body Keeps the Score) discusses the long-term outlook of MDMA in patients with PTSD and what further outcomes he'd like to see explored in the space.

A recent study on soccer players found that heading a soccer ball can impair cognitive function and disrupt the organization of neural processes associated with this activity. The findings were published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

A blood test designed to aid in the rapid diagnosis of concussions has gained FDA approval. The i-STAT Alinity test can detect two proteins released into the blood when someone suffers a concussion and, per statistics from its developer Abbott, has a 95.6 percent rate of ruling out concussions if the test is conducted within 24 hours of the injury. The test is faster than the existing i-STAT TBI test, which requires blood serum and the use of a centrifuge to process results.

Scientists have inserted a “window” into a patient’s skull to monitor their brain activity in real-time. An individual’s brain activity could be observed outside of the operating room with the help of a custom-made, ultrasound-transparent cranial window implant, which was given to an adult patient undergoing skull reconstruction surgery after a traumatic brain injury. While the patient was playing a video game and strumming a guitar, ultrasound was used to record brain activity, which was then mapped to specific cortical responses. This research establishes a foundation for future work toward using ultrasonic imaging through transparent skull replacement materials to understand better how the human brain works.

Post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses among college students more than doubled between 2017 and 2022, climbing most sharply as the coronavirus pandemic shut down campuses and upended young adults’ lives, according to new research published on Thursday.

Low-level light therapy appears to affect healing in the brains of people who suffered significant brain injuries, according to a study published in Radiology. Lights of different wavelengths have been studied for years for their wound-healing properties. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) conducted low-level light therapy on 38 patients who had suffered moderate traumatic brain injury, an injury to the head serious enough to alter cognition and/or be visible on a brain scan. Patients received light therapy within 72 hours of their injuries through a helmet that emits near-infrared light.

Brains of veterans who had experienced explosion-caused concussions show changes in the system responsible for clearing the organ of waste and neurotoxins, a new study shows. The finding may explain why those veterans are more likely to develop psychiatric disorders and cognitive impairment.