The most fervent headers of the ball had significantly fuzzier transitions between gray and white matter in the orbitofrontal region and performed a few points worse on tests of learning and memory compared to players who did little to no heading.
Issue 35.1 WINTER 2026 repetitive head impacts affect the brain, and develop treatments.
A second study from Lipton’ s lab, in press in the journal Neurology, used a different imaging technique to look at the brain and found related damage in the same area.
“ The fact that both techniques, looking at two different features, find the same association strengthens our conclusion that these changes are mediating heading’ s cognitive effects,” Lipton says.
Finding signs of brain injury The researchers used a new imaging technique to look for biomarkers of injury due to heading in an area of the brain previously inaccessible to accurate imaging.
Using diffusion MRI, a technique that examines cellular microstructure and organization, the researchers imaged the athletes’ brains to look at the interface between white and gray matter in the cerebral cortex, the outermost surface of the brain.
“ We looked at this interface because white and gray matter have different densities and move at different rates in response to head impact,” Lipton says.“ That creates shear forces between the two types of tissue, leaving the interface between the two layers vulnerable to injury.”
Typical dMRI techniques work well for analyzing structures deep inside the brain, but significant hurdles limit their ability to analyze the outer layers— the very areas that may be most susceptible to injury from heading. A graduate student in Lipton’ s lab, Joan Song, developed a new method to characterize microstructure within the transition zones between gray and white matter in the brain’ s outer surface.
“ In healthy individuals, there’ s a sharp transition between these tissues,” Song says.“ Here we studied if an attenuation of this transition may occur with minor impacts caused by heading.”
What the study found Lipton’ s team performed dMRI scans on 352 adult amateur soccer players, who reported varying levels of heading over the previous year, and on 77 aged-matched athletes not involved in collision sports. All players took simple learning and memory tests.
The most fervent headers of the ball— reporting more than 1,000 headers each year— had significantly fuzzier transitions between gray and white matter in the orbitofrontal region but not in other regions further back in the brain. Players who most frequently headed the ball also performed a few points worse on tests of learning and memory compared to players who did little to no heading.
Greater damage in the transition zone linked head impacts to worse test performance.
“ It’ s very strong evidence that“ The location of the abnormality these microstructural changes are we report is remarkably similar to likely to be a cause of cognitive CTE pathology, though we don’ t deficits,” Lipton says. yet know if they are linked to CTE
What’ s next? or if any of these currently healthy The lab is now looking at the athletes will develop CTE.” potential relationship between
Lipton’ s lab is also investigating if these biomarkers and the later cardiovascular activity can help development of chronic traumatic buffer the brain from damage encephalopathy( CTE), a neurodegenerative disease that has caused by repetitive impacts. g been diagnosed in athletes who experienced many head impacts over their playing careers.
The most fervent headers of the ball had significantly fuzzier transitions between gray and white matter in the orbitofrontal region and performed a few points worse on tests of learning and memory compared to players who did little to no heading.
6