(This article was originally posted on the website of the McGill Office for Science and Society. It is reposted here as a bit of cross-promotion. Jonathan Jarry contributes content to both the OSS and The Body of Evidence. Head over to the OSS website to see what you’re missing out on)
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How does a woodpecker avoid massive concussions?
The answer to this question has apparently been adapted by a team of doctors into a neck brace that could mitigate mild brain damage during contact sports like hockey or football. It’s called NeuroShield and it’s on sale right now. The question on everyone’s lips: does it work?
First, it is important to note that the website for NeuroShield states that the “collar does not, however, prevent concussions”. Sports-related concussions are a mild form of “traumatic brain injury”. Here’s how they happen. Your brain can slosh around inside your cranium. When you gain speed on the ice and decelerate abruptly-as in being smashed into the boards on the ice rink-your cranium stops in its movement, but your brain maintains its momentum and can impact the cranium, creating damage that can manifest on the spot as impaired consciousness, disorientation, headache, and nausea.
Talk of concussions in sports has trended in recent years, as experts have come to realize that these injuries can lead to brain damage and persistent cognitive issues. We should, however, not disregard what are called “subconcussive collisions”, meaning impacts below the severity of an actual concussion. Indeed, the medical community is interested in the long-term consequences of these collisions which may repeatedly cause damage to the brain that can lead to problems down the road. What if a simple collar could reduce their impact?
The principle behind the device is fairly easy to grasp. Imagine a vinyl backwash hose for your pool. Water is running through it. You grab a piece of it and start to strangle it with your hand. Upstream, the hose will expand, because water has a hard time flowing through the constriction. Now imagine that this hose is a vein in your head. If you found a way to constrict blood flow out of your head, your veins would be bigger and could, the theory goes, better cushion your brain during an impact. The NeuroShield presses on each side of your neck, where your jugular veins are, to do just that.
Given its 199$ retail price, we have reason to interrogate the science behind it.
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Study 1: Hockey
There are only three published studies of the NeuroShield. It’ll quickly become clear that one of their main limitations is their size. In the first study, the authors randomized 15 “healthy male varsity level high school hockey players” to either wear or not wear the NeuroShield for 2 months while playing hockey. The goal was to then have them switch groups, with the non-collar wearers putting on the collar and vice versa for the rest of the season. Helmet sensors were used to make sure that no group received more impacts than the other (the two groups had to be comparable in the end), and players’ brains were assessed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG).
I asked an independent McGill neurologist about his opinion on the study, and he wrote that he was “impressed with this paper” which displayed “excellent design” and was “fairly interpreted”. However, there were “very few cases (as is typical of preliminary studies)”. Indeed, too few participants were recruited to conclude anything remotely generalizable.
The findings were that athletes who were not wearing the NeuroShield had more disruptions of the fine structure of the white matter in their brain from pre-season to mid-season, as well as changes in the connectivity of different parts of the brain. The athletes who wore the NeuroShield had no such changes from pre- to mid-season.
My issue, beyond the small sample size? For an intervention to be useful in the real world, compliance is necessary. When the teenagers who…
