Recent research studying brain tissue from retired NFL players is shedding light on what concussions look like in the brain. Far from being innocuous, invisible injuries as previously thought, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. That damage has a name: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Researchers at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE), at the Boston University School of Medicine, have recently released a report on a study about the sixth documented case of CTE in former NFL player Tom McHale, who died in 2008 at the age of 45, and the youngest case to date, an 18-year-old multi-sport athlete who suffered multiple concussions.

While CTE in an ex-NFL player’s brain may have been expected, the beginnings of brain damage in an 18-year-old brain was a “shocking” finding, according to Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts, and co-director of the CSTE.

CTE has thus far been found in the brains of six out of six former NFL players. Click here for the full article.