The first scientific study to delve into the long-term impacts of concussions specifically among National Hockey League players has yielded some surprising initial results.The Rotman Research Institute at Toronto’s Baycrest Health Sciences is collecting brain images and genetic data and conducting a battery of tests on retired NHL players. On objective tests of cognitive functions such as memory, attention and processing information, the NHL alumni do about as well as the study’s comparison group, and it doesn’t matter how many concussions they had during their careers or whether they have the APOE4 allele, a type of gene that has been associated with increased dementia.“If there was impairment, it was subtle and nobody was significantly cognitively impaired,” said Dr. Brian Levine, the study’s lead.Given how much attention there has been lately on the long-term dangers of repeated hits to the head, particularly among football players in the NFL, that’s not necessarily what they might have expected to find.The study, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry this month, seeks to expand concussion research beyond the popular focus on the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which can be diagnosed only after death, by detailing how living NHL alumni fare over time. But what’s also interesting is that the study’s generally positive main finding doesn’t jibe with how players say they feel. In subjective questionnaires, they reported high levels of behavioural and emotional problems.“There’s nothing glaringly obvious as far as red flags or anything to panic about (from the testing), so that’s good news, because I really don’t want to have anything that scares me,” said Scott Thornton, who played 17 seasons in the NHL and now runs several businesses in Collingwood, Ont.Still, he’s pretty reserved about ...
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