Study links frequent football heading to potential memory decline

A new study has shown that football players who frequently go for headers are more likely to suffer memory loss.

The study published on 24 September in JAMA Network Open claims that subtle but significant brain damage could occur even in the absence of diagnosed concussions.

It reveals the vulnerability of the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex, and provides the clearest link yet between repetitive head impacts and memory loss.

Small impacts with big results

Scientists have struggled to accurately identify where, and how, football heading could be a problem until now. 

Dr. Michael Lipton, professor of radiology and biomedical engineering at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons who has spent more than a decade studying what happens to the brain during soccer play said:

“What’s important about our study is that it shows, really for the first time, that exposure to repeated head impacts causes specific changes in the brain that, in turn, impair cognitive function.

Lipton with his team recruited 352 amateur soccer players from the New York City area, both male and female aged 18 to 55 who had played for at least five years and taken to the pitch in the past six months.

They estimated their heading frequency with a validated self-report tool called HeadCount, which tallies a player’s annual headers.

The players were then subjected to cognitive tests, including one simple task of repeating back words from a grocery list, known as the International Shopping List (ISL) immediate recall.

The results

The result showed that those who reported more than 1,000 headers per year, roughly three per day, had  a blurring of the transition between gray and white matter in the orbitofrontal cortex in MRI scans.

This blurring is thought to result from shear forces during head impacts, when the denser white matter and lighter gray matter move at different rates.

They also scored lower on memory and learning tasks than their low-heading counterparts, all due to the structural brain changes which explained the dip in memory scores.

In summary, the study shows that frequent headings in football can lead to cognitive decline resulting in memory loss.