Neuro Note 1: CTE

For my first neuro note, I chose to watch a Ted Talk.  By only limiting my searching to the topic of "health" I was able to immediately find a talk by Chris Nowinski titled, Can I have your brain?  The quest for truth on concussions and CTE.  Nowinski opened the talk by sharing his past with us.  He played football at Harvard University and then joined the WWE after graduation.  His wrestling era ended when he was kicked in the head and suffered a severe concussion.  Following this incident, Nowinski exhibited permanent post-concussion symptoms, such as depression, headaches, and inability to sleep.  He wanted to make this physical and emotional pain go away, so he decided to start researching.  Upon his research, he came across a diagnosis called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, where he then discovered that two late NFL players had recently been diagnosed with this post-mortem.  At this point, Nowinski was committed to finding the prevalence and prognosis of CTE.  He had a specific infatuation with Andre Waters, an NFL player who committed suicide.  Nowinski wanted to know if there was a correlation between CTE and depression and if this could have led Waters to committing suicide.  Thanks to Water's family, Nowinski was able to obtain his brain, where it was then tested positive for CTE.  Nowinski knew this was not just coincidence, and continued to study and eventually started the Concussion Legacy Foundation, the first center in the world to focus on CTE. With the help of scientists and other neurological professionals, Nowinski and his foundation have received commitments from athletes such as Brandi Chastain and Dale Earnhardt Jr, to donate their brain to science.  Nowinski's initial accusations proved to be accurate, as 110 of the first 111 NFL players' brains received were positive for CTE.  Even though Nowinski has provided strong evidence to believe that CTE is especially prevalent in athletes of contact sports and has the potential to cause depressive symptoms, the journey to find a cure is far from over.

Before watching this talk, I did not know about chronic traumatic encephalopathy.  After doing some follow-up research, I learned that  CTE is most common in athletes, military veterans, and others that have suffered from repetitive head trauma.  As Nowinski suggested, some side effects of CTE are impulse control problems, aggression, and depression, which are all major debilitations to living a healthy, meaningful life.  Even though CTE was discovered in 1928, the first evidence of this disease was not published until 2005.  With this publication being only 13 years ago, and the increasing popularity of contact sports in which CTE is prevalent in (boxing, football, soccer, and ice hockey), I assume this will be an increased area of intervention for occupational therapy practitioners.  This video was especially interesting to me since we just discussed Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) in my Neurological Aspects of Occupational Performance class.  Occupational therapy plays a large part in traumatic brain injury recovery by using client-centered, goal-based interventions that work towards incorporating clients back into a life worth living.  I am very glad I chose this video to watch for my first neuro note.  Even though I have been educated on the traumatic brain injuries, I think it is important to know about CTE since it has a strong correlation with contact sports.  I hope we can continue to be educated about this diagnosis and work towards reliable forms of prevention.

Resources

Concussion Legacy Foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://concussionfoundation.org

Nowinski, C. (2017, November).  Can I have your brain? The quest for truth on concussions and        CTE [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_nowinski_can_i_have_your_brain_a_quest_for_truth_on_concussions_cte