"I always have them. They sit in my back pockets Dylan Remick Seattle Sounders Jersey ," said Visger, 51. "The movie '50 First Dates,' this has been my life for 28 years. I get up in the morning and I have no clued what I have to do that day. If it's not written down it doesn't exist."
Visger said his memory began fading in 1982. During his brief, injury-shortened career playing for the 49ers, he said, a jarring tackle caused a concussion.
It was the culmination of a life using his head -- to tackle -- that almost killed Visger. His is one of several cases of ex-NFL athletes struggling with memory loss, depression and sudden Darwin Jones Seattle Sounders Jersey , frightening bouts of rage. Experts believe the reason for the brain damage is concussion.
Visger said he believes he had hundreds, maybe even thousands, of concussions from Pop Warner to the pros. Scientists have spent years explaining the symptoms Visger and others suffer by examining the brains of athletes after they die, but methods for detecting concussion in living athletes are becoming more sophisticated.
At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Kevin Guskiewicz is leading a study of 3,000 ex-NFL players. A small fraction of those players have undergone imaging technology to peer deep into the brain Damion Lowe Seattle Sounders Jersey , down to the nerve cells, to try to explain their cognitive problems.
The technique is called diffusion tensor imaging. It is a measurement of how well neurons, the brain's information messengers, are connected to one another in the brain. If the neurons travel unfettered, it indicates a healthy brain. When the flow is disrupted, it may indicate damage.
"We look for regions where there may be deranged or disrupted fibers," said Guskiewicz Cristian Roldan Seattle Sounders Jersey , the research director at the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at UNC Chapel Hill. "We are led to believe that in regions where that are occurring, there may be swelling, there may be scar tissue. That piece we don't know yet, but what we're finding in these retired pro football players, especially those with high concussion history, is they tend to have these problems of connectivity."
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