Why Is It So Hard to Stop Sports Concussions?

Human behavior conspires with the complex mechanics of head impacts to keep injury rates high. Recent research shows why so many sports injuries keep occurring and points to some possible solutions. Protecting the brain from concussion and chronic traumatic encephalopathy requires more than just increasing the amount of helmet padding. It necessitates an understanding of how brain injury differs from the cracking of an egg dropped on the floor, and how helmets influence the behavior of those who wear them. The threads connecting the egg to the lid of the jar twist around one another and either break or tear away a piece of the egg's shell. Making things more confusing, researchers have not yet been able to identify a single factor that determines the threshold for concussion. The proposed multi-factorial measure was more predictive of concussion than guessing, suggesting that the causes of concussion are complex and cannot be identified by a single biomechanical variable.