Concussions

Engineers at Michigan State University have crafted a new type of liquid foam lining they say can help football helmets better sustain repeated impacts, improving their longevity and the safety of those wearing them.

​The most common cause of concussions in hockey is shoulder-to-head impacts. According to research being conducted at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University, however, the severity of those impacts could be greatly reduced with the simple addition of a layer of foam.

Concussions often go undetected, but Prevent Biometrics is aiming to change that. Its sensor-equipped mouthguard detects potentially dangerous head impacts in real-time and issues an immediate alert when an assessment is required.

When one Texas high school player suffered a concussion, he was inspired to develop a more protective helmet and shoulder pads, inspired by nature. ​

Picking up on the symptoms and long-term effects of concussion can be tricky business. Looking to further our understanding of brain injuries and how they can be managed to avoid long-term harm, Samsung has developed an experimental brainBAND to quantify the force of impacts to the head.

University of Michigan researchers have entered the race to build a lightweight, more affordable and more effective football helmet with a system they’ve called Mitigatium that incorporates three different layers that are meant to blunt some dangerous physics that today’s helmet designs ignore.

A collaboration between the University of Washington and helmet manufacturer VICIS has led to the development of the Zero1, a football helmet designed to absorb impact more effectively than designs currently in use. It features an outer shell that yields upon impact like a car bumper.

A team from the University of Pennsylvania has developed a color-changing polymer material that could one day be incorporated into headgear to instantly gauge the severity of blows and provide a clearly visible indication of injury.

Concussions – or at least concussion discussions – are all the rage lately, particularly in relation to professional sports leagues like the NFL. BlackBox Biometrics adds to the discussion with the Linx IAS, a small, lightweight sensor designed to track concussive forces.