Speaking of Chemistry: Rethinking football head injuries (video)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4, 2014 — Football season is here, and along with thousands of lost hours of productivity from fantasy teams, there’s a renewed discussion on the impact of head injuries on players. This week’s Speaking of Chemistry focuses on a brain disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), whose symptoms include memory loss, depression and aggressive or violent behavior. Current detection methods can only identify CTE after a patient has died, leaving many NFL players with a diagnosis that came too late. Now doctors are developing a way to spot CTE in its early stages and hopefully develop a treatment before tragedy strikes. Find out more at http://youtu.be/edTLgVg8nYw.

Speaking of Chemistry is a production of Chemical & Engineering News, a weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society. The program features fascinating, weird and otherwise interesting chemistry topics. Subscribe to the series at http://youtube.com/CENOnline and follow us on Twitter @CENMag.

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