Nearly 3 million youth players participate in tackle football programs across the United States. And there are about 2,000 active National Football League players, Whitlow noted.
Whitlow said he and his colleagues were particularly concerned about the impacts to the head that don’t lead to a concussion. The brains of youth and high school football players are still undergoing rapid development, and repeated hits that don’t result in brain injury still might have an effect that adds up over time, the researchers said.
To study this, the research team recruited 25 participants from a local youth football team during the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
At the beginning of the season, players had an advanced MRI scan performed on their brain. They also were provided helmets embedded with sensors that measure the severity of every hit to the head that occurs during play.
“We’re evaluating the biomechanics of each one of those head impacts, for every practice and every game,” Whitlow said. He added that the researchers reviewed video recordings to verify that the sensors had accurately recorded each hit.
None of the players in the study suffered a concussion during the season of play. At the end of the season, the players underwent a second MRI scan, and the researchers compared the two scans to track changes in the brain. The researchers also evaluated the head impact data for each player, to see if there was any connection between the hits they took and the changes observed in their brains.