Possible Advancement in Concussion Detection
Samsung continues it's tecnological outreach into everything not phones and televisions. The company has developed a wearable band which can detect the amount of force inflicted upon the wearer's head. The data is sent directly to the medical staff on standby via a tablet, smartphone, or smartwatch.
Which is, well, smart.
Perhaps the days of "How many fingers am I holding up?" are coming to an end.
https://www.wareable.com/sport/samsung-brainband-concussion-wearable-25…
I can see this data backfiring in some sense. I suspect if they had evidence of the amount of damage being done to these guys, there would be some inevitable changes. Still, I hope this does lead to making the game safer for these players so it does seem like a good thing.
I agree. Knowledge is power. However, in this case the power is probably not a good thing. Some moran congressman will get ahold of the data and make said changes.
This data in the right hands is excellent. But it won't stay in the right hands.
The more research and data they can make sense out of, the better. Seems like a good, non-invasive, step in the right direction.
You could get one banging your head into a counter etc.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
How many times a day does the average person find themselves banging their heads on a counter?
aye-oh
(unfortunately true)
A true fan....
Researchers are increasingly coming to believe that it isn't necessarily concussions that are the problem, but rather repeated forceful impacts to the head. So if they could come up with a metric whereby there was a maximum force load per day (a very big if), that could be a major advance.
we need to do. For safeties sake and also because unfortunately, if additional evidence comes in proving further dangerous links to CTE, we may not be able to stop busybodies and morality police types from getting the game banned.
What they need is a test, imaging-based or biochemical, that measures damage to the brain. Then, they need an agent that repairs the damage.
There are actually a lot of really cool technologies that are being used to determine if brain injury is occuring without the need to get hospital based tests (CT, MRI, etc) . One of the more promising ones is Brainscope, which uses EEG and a phone app(So it is incredibly mobile). It is currently pending FDA approval, but is in advanced clinical trials at hospitals, with the military and NFL teams.
http://www.techinsider.io/brainscope-concussion-app-nears-fda-approval-…
As the article points out, the device doesn't diagnose CTE and that is the big problem. CTE can only be diagnosed from the examination of brain tissue after death. Perhaps there is a precursor that can be measured, but all of these tests, while interesting, really aren't predictive of whether someone will get CTE.
perhaps some parameters could be established that determine when a football player is done for the day.
This would not only help detect, but it would also incentivize players to substitute their shoulders for their head when making contact.
No, we might not know exactly how much safer this would make the sport, but at least we'd know the direction: safer.
But, yeah, I can see the lawyers messing it all up.
Although you are technically correct that it cannot predict CTE, it is known that CTE is caused by repeated traumatic injuries. Therefore, it isn't really something that you would see happen in real time. The goal of this device, and the one the OP mentioned are to more readily identify individuals who had a significant collision and possible acute brain injury. Decreasing repeative brain injury (especially in those who have had recent brain trauma) will decrease the amount of CTE in the future.
I hope that wasn't too nuanced, however, I think saying that "the device can't diagnose CTE so its useless" is a little too big picture. If you can pick up and treat small injuries, the current understanding is that the risk of "big injuries" (ie. CTE) will also decrease.
I fully understand what the device is trying to achieve, but the problem is that in spite of a vast amount of head to head contact, some athletes never experience problems while others do. On top of that, there is another real problem that studies have shown to produce CTE and that is contact without any head to head impact. When two players collide, body to body, the head experiences significant decelerative force causing sloshing of the brain within the skull. In the case of linemen, this form of contact, rather than violent helmet to helment contact, is believed to be a signifcant causation factor for CTE.
The article below talks about using PET scans for possible diagnosis.
http://www.tsn.ca/a-possible-breakthrough-on-testing-cte-1.210725
This piece from Harvard talks about pharmaceutical solutions:
Isn't that what would be measured?
I know there are different "kinds" of forces, shears, etc., but we are in the infancy of the technology. I think having some conjectured measures that should be correlated with brain damage could be helpful in pursuing improvements iteratively. As long as they're understood to be conjecture and treated with some healthy skepticism.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/concussions-sports-blood-test-traumatic-brain-injury-cte-379948
New blood test looks VERY promising...I strongly suspect they will get to the point where a blood sample can be taken immediately after an incident for diagnosis.
Thats very innovative.
Next, they should put a chip in the football that senses whether any part of it crosses the goal line, or whether its entirety crosses the extended imaginary upright goal post line. That wouldnt be so hard....
that makes it go through the hoop for me.
Maybe Steph Curry already has one?
Yeah or "morality police" like parents may use this evidence to, god forbid, make an informed decision and keep their kids away from football themselves. I'm sure that would be unacceptable to you too, given it would take away your fix within 10-20 years
Or CPS looks at the data, concludes there is a causal relationship and that football is, in fact, child endangerment
I'm fully aware this might not be true at all. We don't have anything conclusive yet. But it sounds like some here are more afraid it might be proven inescably dangerous for kids than they are of putting kids in inescably dangerous situations. And that's just all kinds of fucked up