aaron hernandez and CTE in the NFL
watched the aaron hernandez netflix documentary. some immediate takeaways:
aaron hernandez was an amazing athlete
aaron hernandez was a murderer
aaron hernandez was a gay man
aaron hernandez also had the worst brain damage doctors had ever seen.
yes, aaron hernandez was complicated. we don’t understand what he did or why he did it. what we do know is that the chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in his brain did not help.
aaron hernandez suffered severe damage to parts of the brain that play an important role in memory, impulse control and behavior.
dr. ann mckee, neurologist and director of the CTE center at boston university, said the following after examining hernandez’s brain:
“In any individual we can’t take the pathology and explain the behavior. But we can say collectively, in our collective experience, individuals with CTE and CTE of this severity have difficulty with impulse control, decision-making, inhibition of impulses or aggression, often emotional volatility and rage behaviors.”
if her name looks familiar, it is. in 2017, mckee published the seminal study on CTE in football. Her research, which sampled 202 brains of deceased American football players, found that a 177 players across all levels (87%), including 110 of 111 NFL players (99%) showed signs of CTE.
the prevalence of CTE in football is still unknown. however, this link might provide an indication.