Comparison of brain strain in ball heading and concussion-level sports head impact cases

Engineering of Sport 15 - Proceedings from the 15th International Conference on the Engineering of Sport (ISEA 2024)

Ball heading by young football players has been regularly restricted in response to concerns over the potential neurological impact associated with this practice. However, the differences in mechanisms between chronic traumatic encephalopathy(CTE), which may result from cumulative low-level impacts due to ball heading, and concussion, which arises from a single, higher-level impact in sports, remain incompletely understood. Additionally, there is a lack of comparative analysis of brain strain mechanisms and strain levels during heading with other head collision cases resulting in concussions in sports. Therefore, this study aims to compare brain strain during heading with concussion-level head impact cases in American football.