Full coverage: Concussions

New research has found that a protein indicating the breakdown of white matter in the brain can be detected following a hard blow to the head, raising hopes that a blood test could soon detect a concussion, predict how long symptoms will linger, and guide decisions about an athlete’s return to play.

Watching the brains of former football players at work on a demanding mental task, researchers believe they have identified an early warning sign of concussions’ cumulative toll, and the cognitive trouble it may portend.

New research from Canada has found that roughly 1 in 5 adolescents has probably suffered a traumatic brain injury--a figure that suggests severe concussion among children and adolescents may be far more common than has been estimated.

For college athletes who get through their sport’s season concussion-free, new research suggests it may be too early to breathe a sigh of relief.

The extra brainpower that comes with having spent more years in a classroom is a powerful aid to recovery following a moderate to severe brain trauma, a new study finds.

Here’s one solution to the National Football League’s concussion problem: Stop playing at sea level.

Elderly people who have both mild cognitive impairment and a history of serious concussion showed higher amounts of the protein deposits associated with Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study.

Bucking the emerging belief that females are more vulnerable to concussion, a new study finds that irrespective of the severity of initial concussive symptoms, girls and women who’ve suffered mild traumatic brain injury recover faster than do boys and men.

Super Bowl viewers might want to keep an eye on the helmets crashing together in Sunday’s game between the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos.

Thursday’s $765-million settlement between the National Football League and 4,500 retired NFL players underscores two key facts about traumatic brain injury: that it is difficult to prove and measure -- especially many years after the fact -- and that its link to neurocognitive problems that appear years later remains an enigma.

After Krista Rickards’ daughter Sarah suffered a severe concussion on a high school volleyball court in September 2010, the teenager returned to school in a matter of days.

The problem with diagnosing concussion, or mild traumatic brain injury, is that, well, you can seldom do it with any certainty.

Research to prevent and better treat brain injury is incomplete, the Institute of Medicine says. Reluctance to report trauma endangers young athletes, it says.

The U.S. military has faced two epidemics over the last decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Heading the ball is a key soccer skill, but a new study finds that players who headed the ball frequently were more likely to suffer brain injury and damage their memory than their fellow players who were a little less headstrong, so to speak.

On football fields across the country, the sweating, grunting and hitting of pre-season practice is in full swing, and the nation’s athletic trainers are warning that there’s still too much head-to-head contact in the game -- and with it, potentially catastrophic danger to the head, neck and spine.

Fighting and body-checking are as integral to ice hockey as skates and pucks, but at what cost?

Could a spring-loaded fly swatter save NFL football players and Iraq war veterans from the effects of concussions and traumatic brain injuries?

Health experts have some bad news for high school football players: There is no particular type or brand of helmet or mouth guard that will keep you relatively safe from a concussion.

A screening test for concussion that can be performed quickly on the sidelines was able to detect mild traumatic brain injury in about 4 in 5 college athletes who had sustained a concussion, a forthcoming study has found.

Here’s a novel idea, given that American parents send almost 4 million of their children out to play tackle football every year, despite mounting concerns about youth concussions: Maybe the helmets their kids wear should be tested and ranked on how well they prevent concussion.