玩橄榄球会撞伤大脑？来看初步研究结果
A single season playing football might be all it takes to change a young athlete's brain.
玩儿一个赛季的橄榄球也许就已经可以改变一个青年运动员的大脑了。
Those are the preliminary findings of research presented this week in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
这些是本周在芝加哥举行的北美放射学会年会上公布的初步研究结果。
Researchers used special MRI methods to look at nerve bundles in the brain in a study of the brains of 26 young male football players, average age 12, before and after one season.
在一项对26名平均年龄为12岁的年轻橄榄球运动员的大脑进行的研究中，研究人员使用了特殊的核磁共振成像方法来观察他们大脑中的神经束。
Twenty-six more young males who didn't play football also got MRI scans at the same time to be used as a control group.
另外26名不玩橄榄球的年轻男性同时也接受了核磁共振成像扫描，作为对照组。
In the youths who played football, the researchers found that nerve fibers in their corpus callosum — the band that connects the two halves of brain — changed over the season, says lead study author Jeongchul Kim, a research associate in the Radiology Informatics and Imaging Laboratory at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C.
在年轻人打橄榄球时,研究人员发现,神经纤维在胼胝体——连接大脑的两个部分的纽带——在赛季后发生了改变,主要研究作者金勇澈说,他是位于北卡罗莱纳州的维克森林医院的放射信息和成像实验室的一名研究助理。
"We applied here two different imaging approaches," he says.
“我们在这里应用了两种不同的成像方法，”他说。
One analyzed the shape of the nerve fibers and the other focused on the integrity of the nerves.
一组分析神经纤维的形状，另一组关注神经的完整性。
Kim says the researchers found some nerve bundles grew longer and other bundles became shorter, or contracted, after the players' initial MRI scans at the beginning of the season.
金先生说，研究人员发现，在赛季初球员进行核磁共振扫描后，一些神经束变长，另一些神经束变短或收缩。
He says they saw no changes in the integrity of the bundles.
他说他们没有看到神经束的完整性有任何变化。
The team says these results suggest that repeated blows to the head could lead to changes in the shape of the corpus callosum, which is critical to integrating cognitive, motor and sensory functions between the two hemispheres of the brain, during a critical time for brain development in young people.
研究小组说，这些结果表明，在年轻人大脑发育的关键时期，反复击打头部可能导致胼胝体形状的改变，胼胝体对整合大脑两个半球之间的认知、运动和感觉功能至关重要。
The researchers say their ultimate goal is to help inform guidelines for safer football play for youths.
研究人员表示，他们的最终目标是为青少年提供更安全的橄榄球比赛指导方针。
Since the discovery of the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the early 2000s, most of the research into the consequences of repeated head injuries during sports has been on adult athletes.
自2000年代初发现退行性脑疾病慢性创伤性脑病以来，对运动过程中反复头部损伤后果的研究大多集中在成年运动员身上。
This focus has occurred despite growing concerns that young athletes who experience the same kinds of collisions may also be vulnerable to their effects.
这种集中在成人的研究出现了，然而越来越多的人担心，经历过同样类型碰撞的年轻运动员也可能容易受到碰撞的影响。
Radiologist Christopher Whitlow, a co-author of the new findings, says while the stories about NFL and collegiate players are very important, they have to be put into context.
放射学专家克里斯托弗.惠特洛，是这次新发现的共同作者，他说尽管关于全美橄榄球联赛和大学生运动员的研究很重要，它们必须是放在特定的情境中的。
"You have to understand that the NFL players were also most likely once collegiate players, they were also high school players and they were also probably youth players," he says.
“你得明白，美国橄榄球联赛的运动员们曾经也是大学生球员，高中生球员以及青少年球员，”他说。
"To us, it's more than a question about concussions, it's a question about long-term cumulative exposure."
“对我们来说，这不仅仅是一个关于脑震荡的问题，这是一个关于长期累积的撞击的问题。”
That being said, both Whitlow and Kim caution against making their findings out to be more than what they are: preliminary results from a single study with a relatively small number of participants.
话虽如此，惠特洛和金都警告说，不要把他们的发现进行过度解读:这是一项只有相对较少参与者参与的研究的初步结果。
"We don't know what it means," says Whitlow.
“我们还不知道它到底意味着什么，”惠特洛说道。
"The natural next question is, do these changes persist over time? Do they accumulate with multiple seasons? And then No. 3, probably the most important: Do they have any relevance to long-term health?"
“下一个自然的问题是，这些变化是否会持续一段时间?”它们是随着季节的推移而累积起来的吗?第三，可能是最重要的:它们与长期健康有任何关系吗?”
The results, presented at a medical meeting, haven't been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
这项结果目前只在一次医学会议上公布，尚未在同行评议的期刊上发表。
Whitlow says that the team is working on a paper to be submitted to a journal.
惠特洛说，研究小组正在撰写一篇论文，准备投稿给一家杂志。
These latest findings are actually part of a years-long research collaboration among University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Wake Forest University and Children's National Health System in Washington, D.C.
这些最新发现实际上是德克萨斯州立大学西南医学中心、维克森林大学和华盛顿特区儿童国家卫生系统多年合作研究的一部分。
Dr. Gerard Gioia is a pediatric neuropsychologist at Children's National Health whose role in the larger study is to look at the functional outcomes of kids playing football.
杰拉德·焦亚博士是儿童国家健康中心的一名儿童神经心理学家，他在更大范围的研究中扮演的角色是观察玩橄榄球给儿童带来的功能性结果。
He says these latest findings are only a part of the piece of the puzzle they're trying to solve.
他说这些最新的发现只是他们试图解决的问题的一小部分。
"Everybody wants to know, 'Should my kid play football? Should my kid play soccer? Should my kid play ice hockey?'
And we say, 'Can we please study this and understand it?' " says Gioia, who has been pushing for funding for more long-term studies into youth and sports.
“每个人都想知道，'我的孩子应该玩橄榄球吗?我的孩子应该踢足球吗?我的孩子应该打冰球吗?’我们会说，'我们能不能去研究并理解它?’”焦亚表示，他一直在争取资金，进行更多针对青少年和体育的长期研究。
For now, he says, they still have a lot of unanswered questions.
目前来看，他说，他们还要很多没能解答的问题。
对于这项针对玩橄榄球对青少年影响的研究，朋友有什么看法呢？欢迎给amber留言哦！
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