Brain Injury

Montel Williams is not your typical pot-smoking snowboarder. Best known as an Emmy-winning talk show host, the former Marine and decorated naval intelligence officer was also a champion boxer, bodybuilder and power-lifter. In 1999, Williams was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and it hit him hard. After a downward slide to rock bottom, Williams decided to get his life back. Were you active in your younger years? I was extremely active. I was a martial artist.

Montel Williams is not your typical pot-smoking snowboarder. Best known as an Emmy-winning talk show host, the former Marine and decorated naval intelligence officer was also a champion boxer, bodybuilder and power-lifter. In 1999, Williams was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and it hit him hard. After a downward slide to rock bottom, Williams decided to get his life back. Were you active in your younger years? I was extremely active. I was a martial artist.

When a movie calls itself "The Vow," you know it takes its love and its relationships seriously. And that's certainly the case with the new romantically and medically challenged weepie starring Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum. Despite the sweet story -- lovely couple, car wreck, brain injury, she forgets him, he loves her anyway -- and the beautiful scenery -- cool converted warehouse spaces, snowy Chicago streets, Lake Michigan in the moonlight, and of course Tatum and McAdams -- this is a movie that leaves you wanting more.

Former NFL star Junior Seau's death by apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound follows a pattern of suicides by other high-profile football players who suffered from long-term effects of repeated brain injury. That list of players includes Andre Waters of the Philadelphia Eagles and Terry Long of the Pittsburgh Steelers. And just last year, former Chicago Bears player Dave Duerson shot himself in the chest, but not before requesting that his brain be donated to science so that researchers could study the long-term effects caused by concussion and other repeated brain injuries.

Laura Gagliardi awoke from a coma on her 17th birthday, three months after she suffered traumatic brain injury in a car accident. It was an event her family and doctors had hoped for but did not expect. Gagliardi had arrived at the hospital unconscious and unresponsive. But rather than battling to keep the teenager out of a coma, Dr.

In the year after a traumatic brain injury, roughly half of survivors will likely experience a bout of clinical depression — a rate almost eight times higher than that found in the general population, a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. has found. And those whose head trauma was followed by depression reported significantly more pain, greater mobility problems and more difficulty carrying out their usual responsibilities than those who were not plagued by post-injury depression.

Last month, when University of Southern California wide receiver Garrett Green bobbled the football on a key play against Washington State, red flags went up among the Trojans' athletic trainers on the sidelines. Only minutes before, Green had tackled an opponent -- hard -- on a kickoff return. His sudden lack of coordination struck team trainer Russ Romano as a pretty likely sign of concussion. FOR THE RECORD: Concussions: An article in Monday's Health section on new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat concussions said USC wide receiver Garrett Green was 19 years old. He is 21. — Romano called Green to the sidelines, asked him a few quick questions and got back answers confused enough to take the senior from Chatsworth out of the game.

Heading a soccer ball can lead to moments of glory, but it could also lead to a future of pain. Radiologists reported Tuesday that repeated heading could cause brain injury and cognitive impairment characteristic of concussion. A study followed 38 amateur soccer players who had been playing the sport since childhood and found that using your head more than 1,000 to 1,500 times within a 12-month period could cause symptoms of cognitive dysfunction similar to those seen in patients who have suffered from a concussion, said study leader Dr. Michael Lipton, director of radiology research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York.

Could freestyle skier Sarah Burke, who died Jan. 19, nine days after a devastating crash, have been helped by an experimental drug? A new study offers a glimmer of hope for future victims of traumatic brain injury. In the hours after she has sustained a blow to the head, the victim of a traumatic injury experiences a slow down of blood flow to the brain--arguably when she needs it most. That mismatch between a brain's response and its needs in the wake of injury has set many a neuroscientist thinking: Can a way be found to keep the flow of oxygenated blood pumping normally?

"Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" 9 p.m. Dec. 1, NBC Episode: "Rescue" The Premise: Twenty-six-year-old Caitlin Lemarck throws a party at which she is attacked, and her head is smashed against a mirror. She has a seizure and is taken to the hospital, where she goes into cardiac arrest. The emergency room doctors aren't able to resuscitate her, and she dies of bleeding into her brain (a subdural hematoma). Upon examining Lemarck's body, Dr. Melinda Warner ( Tamara Tunie)

WASHINGTON - Matt Pizzo has a law degree, can-do attitude, proven leadership skills, and expertise in communications and satellite technology from his four years in the Air Force. Yet the 29-year-old has been told that he's overqualified, too old, too "non-traditional," and that he's fallen behind his civilian contemporaries. "It was disheartening, to say the least," he said of his latest job rejection. "But it's typical, I'm afraid. " For unemployed veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, rejection is a special ordeal.

Reporting from Glendale, Ariz. — "I look completely normal, right?" a completely normal-looking Taylor Twellman says. It's something he asks often, and the response is always the same: nodding heads, words of affirmation, smiles. In reality, though, Twellman is far from normal. Three and a half years ago, the then-New England Revolution forward and former Major League Soccer most valuable player was accidentally punched in the jaw by Galaxy goalkeeper Steve Cronin while scoring on a header.

Could freestyle skier Sarah Burke, who died Jan. 19, nine days after a devastating crash, have been helped by an experimental drug? A new study offers a glimmer of hope for future victims of traumatic brain injury. In the hours after she has sustained a blow to the head, the victim of a traumatic injury experiences a slow down of blood flow to the brain--arguably when she needs it most. That mismatch between a brain's response and its needs in the wake of injury has set many a neuroscientist thinking: Can a way be found to keep the flow of oxygenated blood pumping normally?

When a movie calls itself "The Vow," you know it takes its love and its relationships seriously. And that's certainly the case with the new romantically and medically challenged weepie starring Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum. Despite the sweet story -- lovely couple, car wreck, brain injury, she forgets him, he loves her anyway -- and the beautiful scenery -- cool converted warehouse spaces, snowy Chicago streets, Lake Michigan in the moonlight, and of course Tatum and McAdams -- this is a movie that leaves you wanting more.

The hospital was built in the years after World War II. Its ceilings are low, corridors long and corners sharp — all possible stress triggers for those who have been in combat. Not to mention that a hospital waiting room can make anyone edgy. But the Veterans Affairs hospital in Fresno has found a way to make the experience easier: live music. A musician playing amid the hustle and bustle is familiar to anyone who has ever sat at a cafe with entertainment or taken the subway.

Jamal Lewis , Dorsey Levens and two other former NFL players have sued the league over brain injuries that they say left them struggling with medical problems years after their playing days ended. Lewis and Levens, along with Fulton Kuykendall and Ryan Stewart , filed the lawsuit against the National Football League and NFL Properties LLC this week in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. The players maintain the NFL knew as early as the 1920s of the potential for concussions to harm its players but only went public last year.

Theater and film actress Natasha Richardson suffered a serious brain injury in a Canadian skiing accident and was flown to New York on Tuesday, according to wire service and newspaper reports. The 45-year-old British performer -- who is married to Liam Neeson and is the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and the late film director Tony Richardson -- fell on a beginner slope Monday afternoon at Mont Tremblant, a Swiss-style luxury winter resort about 80 miles northwest of Montreal.

reporting from louisville, ky. Greg Page, a former heavyweight boxing champion who suffered a severe brain injury in a 2001 fight, has died at his Louisville, Ky., home. He was 50. His wife, Patricia Page, said she found the former World Boxing Assn. champion in his bed Monday morning. Patricia Page said he died of complications related to injuries he suffered in the fight. The March 9, 2001, fight left Page in a coma for nearly a week. He then had a stroke during post-fight surgery.

A strongly worded editorial in the Canadian Medical Assn. Journal calls for the end of fighting in the National Hockey League, saying the risk of intentional head trauma is too great to stand by and watch these guys pummel each other. In "Stop the violence and play hockey," neurologist Dr. Rajendra Kale, the journal's interim editor-in-chief makes the case that allowing fighting in the sport and risking major, permanent head trauma is not worth it, despite how popular it may be with spectators.

"The Descendants" Ad Hominem Enterprises U.S. release: Nov. 18 The premise Elizabeth King (Patricia Hastie) is in a water skiiing accident off Waikiki Beach. She suffers severe head trauma, falls into a deep coma and is maintained on life support for more than three weeks. Her husband, Hawaiian land baron Matthew King (George Clooney), must now assume full care of their two daughters while coping with the news that his wife had been having an affair and was preparing to leave him. Elizabeth's physician, Dr. Johnston (Milt Kogan)