Ann McKee Quotes

While we know, on average, that certain positions experience more repetitive head impacts and are more likely at greater risk for CTE, no position is immune.

If chronic bashing of the head could destroy a boxer's brain, couldn't it also destroy a football player's brain? Surely someone in the history of football had thought to look for dementia pugilistica. Unlike boxers, football players wear helmets, but a helmet can't fully protect the head from damaging impact.

The thing you don't realise is that every time you head the ball, your brain shakes. Every single time. Have you ever headed a ball badly and seen stars for a couple of seconds? That's your brain shaking. Let's be honest: that can't be healthy, can it?

We, as a league, we have not in any way changed our desire to do everything we can to make it safe, make it safe as to head injury. We hope and will support any data that would give us more insight into any short- and long-term consequences. We would support that.

The overwhelming evidence is that trauma is a major factor in CTE.

I have a lot of college football players in my Brain Bank with CTE.

A child who plays a game of football for one season without any documented concussion - several months after that season, if you subject his brain to sophisticated psychological testing and radiological testing, functional MRIs, there is evidence of brain damage.

There are the medical dangers of football in general caused by head trauma over repetitive hits.

I'm learning how to prevent my brain from getting worse than it is after suffering a career worth of concussions playing football.

The relationship between concussions and the asserted clinical symptoms of C.T.E. remains unknown.

I forget a lot of things sometimes. I'm not one to sit here and complain. While I did not know the severity of what continuous head traumas could do to an individual and the mind and so forth, I'm not going to sit here and complain.

At some point, we're going to have to get to the point where, before you play football, I'm going to test you at some stage in your life to determine if you're susceptible to concussions. We need a test that shows us that your brain is situated a certain way that puts you at risk. If you are susceptible, don't play football.

My brain is - essentially, you take any college football player in the country, because I have had multiple, multiple concussions. I had 10 documented concussions, four post-concussion seizures and so, but, with that said, my brain is no worse than your average college football player's brain, right?

Is a concussion going to lead to CTE? No, probably not in most cases. But if you have enough concussions over a certain amount of time, yes, then I think you can lead to CTE.

In boxing, you've got CTE from head trauma constantly.

We're hoping that there is large-scale recognition that CTE is a risk when playing football.

It would be ill-advised to compare war and a sport, but I don't think the brain knows the difference. With post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries in blasts with veterans, we see a very similar and somewhat unique issue with repetitive brain injuries in football.

When I read Mike Webster's file before I began his autopsy, I knew he was more than a 50-year-old heart attack victim. His file and the television reports of the death of the former Pittsburgh Steelers center described a long, steep fall into bizarre behavior. I suspected he suffered from some sort of brain disorder.

The families of many athletes - incensed at the sports leagues and hoping to make games safer overall - are increasingly making the brains of players who die prematurely and suspiciously available for study. Some athletes are even making the bequest themselves.

As many know, brain injury comes in many forms. The two most prevalent brain injuries - stroke and trauma - affect more than 2.2 million Americans, and these numbers are expected to grow.

As the National Football League and other pro sports increasingly reckon with the early dementia, mental health issues, suicides and even criminal behavior of former players, the risk of what's known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is becoming clear.

I was reading this story about these people who suffered from brain injuries, and then their behavior changed kind of drastically afterward, and I just said to myself, 'There's no way that that can possibly be true.'

Sometimes a great wound or concussion of the head, especially which happens by falling headlong from an high place, brings a prejudice and weakness to the animal faculty, dulling the understanding.

It's just a matter of sometimes the CTE in your brain affects what happens in your life... and sometimes... it does not.

It doesn't take science to know that when you have head-to-head collisions, there's going to be some effect.