Battlefield Breakthroughs: Promising Research In Concussion Treatment

The Pentagon estimates that one in every five veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffered at least one mild concussion. Since 2007, the military has pumped about $700 million into research on traumatic brain injury. That research can be traced from Fallujah to Friday Night Lights.

The KERA radio story

The glory on a Texas high school football field can evaporate in an instant: like it did in the first episode of TVs series Friday Night Lights. And it did in real life for Jarrod Snell of Keller.

Back on September 16, 2010 I was a sophomore at Keller High School, Jarrod says, willing to share his story. I was playing football. I was the quarterback. And I received four concussions in one football game. I got like two or three just in one play.

After the first hit, Jarrod was slow to get up. But then he jumped right back into the huddle. A few plays later, a student trainer knew something was wrong.

When they snapped the ball to me I just kinda let it go by, he says. Another time I think I gave it to a person on the other team, my family said. I dont remember any of it.

Jarrod missed the rest of his sophomore year and had to make up course-work online later. But it was hard. He says he had trouble keeping his eyes on the page, understanding and concentrating. His mom, looking for different treatment options, found the Center for BrainHealth at U-T Dallas. Jarrod wound up in a research program under Dr. Lori Cook, chief of the pediatric brain injury program.

A concussion is a mild brain injury, Cook explains. And people dont take that very seriously. We hear, well he got his bell rung and such. The force that is put upon the brain causes it to move around the skull, and stretch and tear those white matter fibers, those connections between the different regions of the brain that are so crucial.

Cook says those connections are critical for memory, decision-making, attention span and reaction time.

Jarrod, now 18 and headed to community college this month, became part of what he calls the BrainHealth Centers smart training program a way of thinking thats more abstract and analytical than routine memory exercises.

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Battlefield Breakthroughs: Promising Research In Concussion Treatment