Science Corner March 02, 2026

Concussion Care, Even After Leaving the Olympic Village

When we watch our favorite athletes compete on the world stage, we often see their incredible strength and speed. But sports injuries are more than just getting hurt, they are a complex puzzle that scientists have to solve to keep athletes safe. While we have a lot of information about how college or professional football players get better, we haven’t known as much about Olympic athletes. This study looked into the injuries of these elite performers to see how they handle one of the trickiest injuries: a concussion.

Why is it important to study Olympians?

Olympians are highly trained athletes, yet they often lack the large salaries and consistent medical support available to professional sports stars. Because they travel around the world for training and competition, it can be difficult for them to access appropriate medical care quickly when injuries occur, whether during training or at the Olympic Games themselves. Research has shown that Olympians take significantly longer to return to sport after a concussion compared to college athletes. While a collegiate athlete may recover and return in about 16 days, Olympians often require closer to 34 days. Underreporting of injuries may also contribute to this issue. These findings highlight the need for further scientific study to better understand the causes of delayed recovery in Olympians and to develop strategies to improve injury recognition, reporting, and care.

What did researchers learn about recovery from concussion?

The researchers looked to answer the following questions:

• Duration of Recovery: The study recorded the number of days required for athletes to achieve a “Return to Sport” following concussion.
• Participant Demographics: The researchers analyzed data from 132 athletes who experienced a total of 160 concussions. The cohort included competitors from both Summer and Winter Olympic disciplines, such as speed skating, boxing, and diving.
• Factors Influencing Recovery: The study examined whether prompt medical evaluation after injury affected the speed of recovery.

The study compared athletes who received care after a concussion. They split these athletes into two groups depending on when they saw a doctor following their concussion.

Early Access Group(Saw a doctor in 7 days or less): they took on average 26 days to recover.

Late Access Group(Saw a doctor after 8 days or more): they took on average 45 days to recover.

What does this mean for people who have a head injury?

Researchers found that Olympians often take longer to feel better after a concussion, especially if they do not see a doctor right away. In the past, people thought the best way to heal was to rest in a dark room, but now doctors know that starting light, safe exercise with medical guidance in the first few days, with a gradual return to activity, helps recovery. Getting care quickly from concussion specialists and slowly returning to sports or daily activities can help people heal faster. This is important not only for athletes, but for everyone who gets a concussion. Coaches, trainers, and others need to understand that the brain needs time to heal, especially for athletes who are traveling or feel pressure to return too soon. Teaching everyone, staff, teammates, and fans, about proper concussion care helps keep people safe and healthy.

Who Did This Research?

The authors, Thomas Romeas, Félix Croteau, and Suzanne Leclerc, worked mainly at the Institut national du sport du Québec. They also had help from specialists at the University of Montreal and McGill University.

Romeas, T., Croteau, F., & Leclerc, S. (2024). Where is the research on sport-related concussion in Olympic athletes? A descriptive report and assessment of the impact of access to multidisciplinary care on recovery. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 58, 993–1000.

Science Corner: “Knowledge is Power”
January 2026

A Fresh Look at Brain Injuries
For decades, doctors and scientists have used a simple three-label system for brain injuries, labeling all brain injuries as “Mild”, “Moderate”, or “Severe”. Though this system has helped doctors and scientists categorize brain injuries, this system has important limitations. This past year, experts have developed a new, more detailed patient-centered approach to provide a clearer picture of each person’s unique injury, which will hopefully lead to better and more personalized care.

Who Came Up with the New Framework?
Creating a better system for understanding TBI required teamwork from experts all over the world who are dedicated to improving patient care and research. This new framework was not designed overnight or by a single person; it was a large, collaborative effort. The project was started in 2022 by the U.S. National Institutes of Health–National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NIH-NINDS). They brought together a team of 94 experts from 14 different countries to tackle this challenge. The team included doctors, scientists, and, most importantly, people who have personally experienced a brain injury. Their insights helped ensure that the new system addresses the real-world problems and frustrations that patients and their families face, making the framework more meaningful and practical.

The Problem
The old method for classifying a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) was centered on using a tool called the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS). This scale checks a person’s ability to open their eyes, speak, and move. Based on their total score, their injury is labeled as “mild,” “moderate,” or “severe.” While this has been used for decades, these simple labels can cause serious problems for patients and their families. This labeling system can be harmful for several reasons:

The “Mild” Problem: Calling an injury “mild” can make it hard for patients to get the care they need. Doctors, family members, and even patients themselves might assume they will get better quickly without much help. This can create major hurdles to recovery. As one person with lived experience stated:

“Having been diagnosed with a mild traumatic brain injury [TBI] has created substantial challenges in my recovery. I’ve constantly had to fight to [have my symptoms] be taken seriously.”

The “Severe” Problem: Labeling an injury as “severe” can make doctors and families feel hopeless. This feeling might affect important treatment decisions, as a patient’s chances for recovery may be underestimated from the very beginning. One person who experienced this explained:

“Most doctors and nurses who diagnosed my TBI as severe could not imagine I’d be alive, let alone walking and talking on the stage today.”

The Solution
To fix these problems, experts have developed a new, more detailed patient-centered approach called the CBI-M framework. This new method looks at four key areas to get a complete and personalized picture of a brain injury.
The Four Pieces of the Puzzle: What is the CBI-M Framework?
The new CBI-M framework is a powerful way to understand a brain injury from four different angles. By looking at all four pieces, doctors can build a completer and more personalized picture of a patient’s condition, much like assembling a puzzle. This helps them make better decisions about treatment and follow-up care. Note: These are designed to be used together in diagnosis, not by themselves.

The Clinical Pillar
This is the first and most important step. It not only involves checking the patient’s level of consciousness using the traditional GCS score, but it also includes a careful check of how their pupils react to light. This provides a fundamental snapshot of how the brain is functioning right after the injury.

The Biomarker Pillar
This pillar involves blood tests that looks for tiny molecules that can leak out of brain cells when they are damaged. High levels of these molecules can tell doctors that there is a brain injury, even if nothing shows up on a standard brain scan. This is crucial because it can help to diagnose an injury even when a CT or MRI scan of the brain looks normal.
Biomarkers alone cannot be a diagnostic tool; doctors use them as an aid in diagnosis in collaboration with other elements.

The Imaging Pillar
This piece of the puzzle involves taking pictures of the brain, usually with a CT or MRI scan. Doctors look for physical signs of injury, such as bleeding in or around the brain, a skull fracture, or bruises on the brain tissue itself. This helps them see the structural damage caused by the injury.

The Modifier Pillar
This pillar looks at the whole person, not just the injury. It considers important factors that can affect recovery. This includes the person’s age, any other health problems they had before the injury, their work or living situation, and how the injury happened. These factors are crucial because they can influence how well a person recovers and what kind of support they will need.

How the CBI-M Framework Helps Patients
The most important goal of the CBI-M framework is to improve care for individual patients. By moving beyond simple labels like “mild” or “severe,” it provides a more detailed, personal description of their injury. This allows doctors to create a treatment plan that is tailored to each person’s specific needs.

What’s Next for the CBI-M Framework?
The CBI-M framework is a major step forward, but it is not a finished product. There is more work to be done before it can be used in every hospital and clinic to help every patient with a brain injury. Doctors and researchers have identified several key goals for the future. Here are the next steps:

1. Test It Out: Doctors and scientists need to test the framework in many different studies and with many different patients to make sure it works as well as they hope and truly helps improve patient outcomes.
2. Make It Work for Everyone: The framework was first developed for adults. Now, researchers need to make sure it is also useful and accurate for children and older adults, who may experience brain injuries differently.
3. Create a Scoring System: In the future, researchers hope to create a scoring system or a calculator based on the framework. This could help doctors predict how a patient might recover and what challenges they may face.
4. Make It Usable Everywhere: It is important that this new system can be used all over the world, including in places with fewer resources. Researchers need to figure out how to apply the framework in hospitals that may not have easy access to advanced brain scanners or special blood tests.

Where This Information Comes From
This document summarizes a new medical policy review written by a large international group of brain injury experts, including clinicians, scientists, and people with lived experience of TBI. To read more, check out this publication and this article.

References
Manley, G. T., Dams-O’Connor, K., Alosco, M. L., Awwad, H. O., Bazarian, J. J., Bragge, P., Corrigan, J. D., Doperalski, A., Ferguson, A. R., Mac Donald, C. L., Menon, D. K., McNett, M. M., van der Naalt, J., Nelson, L. D., Pisică, D., Silverberg, N. D., Umoh, N., Wilson, L., Yuh, E. L., Zetterberg, H., Maas, A. I. R., & McCrea, M. A. (2025). A new characterisation of acute traumatic brain injury: the NIH-NINDS TBI Classification and Nomenclature Initiative. The Lancet Neurology , 24 , 512–523.

Adaptive sports are physical activities or sports that have been changed so that people with disabilities or injuries can play them. Sometimes small changes are made to the rules, or special equipment is used to make sure everyone can join in comfortably and safely. These sports can be just for fun or highly competitive.

Adaptive sports are for people with physical injuries, including amputations, or conditions like Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). If you have a brain injury, a physical therapist or an adaptive sports specialist can help you figure out what activities are safe and right for you.

This paper shows that adaptive sports can help people who have physical disabilities, like those with brain injuries. Playing these sports helps people feel better both in their bodies and in their minds. This means that adaptive sports are a valuable way to improve the lives of individuals facing significant challenges, and it’s a smart idea to incorporate them into rehabilitation programs to help people achieve better health and overall well-being.

Many people feel very tired all the time after a stroke or brain injury, even when they rest. But a new study found that listening to music can help people feel more awake, positive, and ready to take on the day. Music doesn’t just make us happy; it changes how the brain works. It connects parts of the brain that help us think, move, and remember. That’s why music can reach us in ways that words sometimes can’t.

Music can change the way the brain looks and works. This happens because listening to or playing music keeps certain parts of the brain active and working together over time. When you listen to music, your brain “lights up”:

• The temporal lobe helps you tell sounds apart, like voices, drums, and guitars.
• The hippocampus and amygdala connect music to your memories and emotions.
• The limbic system releases “feel-good” chemicals that make you happy and motivated.
• The motor system makes your body want to move.

Music brings people together and helps the brain’s different parts “talk” to each other, which is important for healing and recovery.