How the Media and Healthcare Community Have Fostered Misconceptions About Concussion

In a New Scientist interview, released just after Harvard University Press published Shaken Brain: The Science, Care, and Treatment of Concussion, Dr. Sandel discussed how the media and even the healthcare community at large have fostered misconceptions about concussion, describing it as “mild” or inconsequential. She answered additional questions about how the brains of young people are vulnerable to concussion because our brains are not fully developed until our mid- to late-20s.

When asked what scientist she would like to talk to, living or dead, she recalled Sabina Strich, an early pioneer researcher in Germany who fled the Nazis to continue her research in England. Strich, a neuropathologist, studied the microscopic brain damage referred to as “diffuse axonal injury,” and she died in 2015 at the age of 90. When asked by the interviewer about something that “would blow our minds,” Dr. Sandel said: “The human brain’s current configuration may only be about 40,000 years old. That greater capacity for thinking and creating has had helpful and harmful results. I’ve always been an optimist, but unless we figure out how to manage the darker side of our psyches, we will destroy the planet.”

The entire interview can be found here:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532691-800-why-our-understanding-of-concussion-has-been-completely-wrong/