Can Concussions Lead to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)?

Scientists aren't yet sure why, but having several concussions makes you more likely to develop a degenerative brain disease. In this video, Walter J. Koroshetz, MD, director of the NINDS, explains what this disease is and how it occurs.

Transcript

00:00

With multiple concussions, people develop something else, which is a degenerative brain disease.

00:06

And how that happens over time is

00:12

people looking very seriously at that from a scientific point of view. And we don't understand a lot of it.

00:19

We do know is that that condition is characterized by the deposition of a protein called tau inside the nerve

00:27

cells. And tau seems to be a bad actor in the brain. It has a normal function, but when

00:35

it aggregates into these clumps, those cells usually do poorly and die.

00:41

And that occurs in what we call chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is the neurodegenerative disease that comes with concussion.

00:49

But the same tau protein is in the cells of Alzheimer that die, in the cells of frontotemporal dementia

00:55

patients who have that type. Tau accumulates and those cells die.

01:01

So tau is a focus, now. You know, it's kind of a potential bullet

01:08

that is killing cells under various conditions inside the brain.