Science for You: Safer football
Researchers in the Purdue Neurotrauma Group are studying Lafayette-area high school football players to see how impacts on the field affect their brains. Their goal is to reduce injuries through safer helmet technologies football helmets and coaching strategies.
The Purdue Neurotrauma Group is led by Eric Nauman, Thomas Talavage and Larry Leverenz. They are researching the potential health effects of repeated head impacts and ways of improving safety for high school football players. Nauman is a professor of mechanical engineering, basic med
ical sciences and biomedical engineering. Talavage is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering and co-director of the Purdue MRI Facility. Leverenz is a clinical professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology and an expert in athletic training.
expanded their work to underclassmen. The researchers also are emphasizing the importance of coaching techniques that reduce neurotrauma, most notably, keeping the number of hits below 90 per week. “We know that once you go above 90 hits per week players start to accrue damage that doesn’t repair itself easily,” Nauman says.
The team is studying ways to overcome the limitations of conventional football helmets, which are designed to prevent skull fractures but not to absorb energy to reduce shocks to the brain. Nauman likens today’s football helmets to 1960s automobiles, which lacked the crumple zones of modern cars.
“What we want to do is create helmets that have a crumple zone that deform to take a lot of that energy out of the hit and protect the brain,” Nauman says.
A YouTube video is available at https://youtu.be/FnctsHKIpyk.
More information: http://bit.ly/2ppWbZG