In 2017, researchers from University College London examined postmortem the brains of six former soccer players who had developed dementia. Last year a study by a team at Glasgow University found that former professional soccer players were three and a half times more likely to die from dementia and other serious neurological diseases. But according to Prof Michael Grey, who is leading a project on soccer and dementia at the University of East Anglia, heading the ball is the most obvious culprit. Assuming that heading the ball is the culprit, another question is how exactly these repeated impacts make the brain more vulnerable. They are hoping to track 100 ex-professional soccer players and 100 ex-rugby players, as well as hundreds of members of the public, over the coming decades.

Source: Taipei Times February 01, 2020 16:07 UTC