UNL research is taking a closer look into sports-related concussions

There have been increasing concerns over the last decade about health outcomes for athletes who have a concussion.

A research team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is working to better understand this by having MRI scans done on every rostered Nebraska football player. Scott Frost agreed to the commitment last year.

“This is the only program in the country that systematically obtains basic MRI’s on every football player and follow-up MRI scans after every concussion and during recovery,” Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior, Cary Savage said.

Last season, they were able to obtain MRI scans on 110 football players. This is a long term project so they do not have any takeaways in terms of results at this time. They hope to eventually expand to women’s sports with high rates of concussion.

“The goal is to immediately protect the players health but also provide us with long term data so we can better understand bio markers of concussion and concussion recovery,” Savage said.

Another research team is trying to help Nebraska athletics by changing the model of the Nebraska Athletic Performance Laboratory to performance rather than research.

“The reality is that research in the lab does not often transfer very smoothly and cleanly over to the playing field so we are there to kind of bridge that gap between the lab and reality,” Director of Nebraska Athletic Performance Laboratory, Christopher Bach.

The team says a performance-oriented approach will also better address the urgency that is required by coaches and athletes.

The Nebraska Athletic Performance Laboratory, inside Memorial Stadium, is where both of these research teams will focus on improving the performance and health of Nebraska student athletes.