For spectators, Menlo School’s football games are as traditional as autumn leaves, apple cider and crisp air. But the young athletes are wearing something high-tech and hidden: custom-designed mouth guards with motion sensors, collecting data that reveals what happens to the brain in the moments after a hit. The new Stanford research project is the nation’s first study in youth to measure rotation and full motion of the head during impacts, according to co-principal investigator and concussion expert David Camarillo, assistant professor of bioengineering.
While his team previously has studied concussion in Stanford athletes and National Football League players, they sought to learn more about the consequences in the developing brain. An estimated 4 million teenagers and children play the sport, raising concerns about long-term cognitive impact. About 100 football players in three private schools — Menlo School and Sacred Heart Preparatory in Atherton and Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose — are volunteers in the first year of the study, which will continue through the 2018 football season. It aims to expand to more schools in 2019. Embedded in the front, next to the incisor teeth, are gyroscopic sensors and accelerometers that measure the mouth guard’s position in space, as well as the forces that are acting upon it. In essence, it documents how the head is moving.
Credits:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/18/concussions-stanford-researchers-use-high-tech-mouth-guards-to-study-head-trauma-in-young-athletes/
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