CMC'S NEWS' REVIEW (VII)

A new ‘spin’ on concussions

Student Society for Science                                                                                                         31-1-15

https://student.societyforscience.org/article/new-%E2%80%98spin%E2%80%99-concussions?mode=topic&context=39

SCIENTIFIC SHIELD: Brain & Behavior 

SUMMARY:

Rugby and football players, boxers, mixed martial arts ... They are people whose sports involve too much contact.In this article Hernandez explains that how these people can brain injury with a tackle and he shows us how many hits they receive.Hernandez and his team recruited football players, boxers and a mixed-martial-arts fighter for their study. Each athlete was fitted with a mouthguard. He or she wore it to practices and in competitions. The researchers also recorded video during those times. This allowed the scientists to view head movement when sensors recorded strong acceleration events. More than 500 head impacts occurred. Each athlete was evaluated for evidence of a concussion caused by those head impacts. Only two concussions emerged.

CRITICAL APPRAISAL: I'm a rugby player, and is not true at all that we receive 500 head impacts! Rugby, football, boxing...maybe aren't the safer sports in the world but they aren't risky as it seems to be in the article. The methods used to measure head impact forces are not yet reliable enough for doctors to use to diagnose a likely head injury. It means that the experiment is not reliable at all. So in my opinion the hole experiment is useless. I think that using a mouthguard with a sensor and recording a matc we can't know why the injureds are cause or how. Another fail of the experiment is the fact that they create a  a computer program that modeled the head and brain. It showed what brain areas were most likely to twist or suffer some other type of strain but is not reliable at all. To sum up, it's true that we've to take care with our brain but we can't exaggerate things.

GLOSSARY:computer program  A set of instructions that a computer uses to perform some analysis or computation. The writing of these instructions is known as computer programming.concussion  Temporary unconsciousness, or headache, dizziness or forgetfulness due to a severe blow to the head.strain  (in physics) The forces or stresses that seek to twist or otherwise deform a rigid or semi-rigid object.

sensor  A device that picks up information on physical or chemical conditions — such as temperature, barometric pressure, salinity, humidity, pH, light intensity or radiation — and stores or broadcasts that information. Scientists and engineers often rely on sensors to inform them of conditions that may change over time or that exist far from where a researcher can measure them directly.