Just a single season of contact sports can take a toll on college athletes’ ability to learn, according to a new study. Overall, one season’s worth of repetitive hits did not seriously harm players’ thinking and memory skills, but when it came to learning, a small group of players was negatively affected. “The good news is that we did not find that a season of essentially hitting your head over and over again was associated with widespread deterioration in cognitive performance,” said Dr. Thomas McAllister, director of neuropsychiatry at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and an author on the study.
