Concussions In Sports, The Psychological Impact

Blog by Santiago McLaughlin

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Intro: What is a concussion:

According to the CDC: “A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury—or TBI—caused by a bump, blow, or jolt to the head or by a hit to the body that causes the head and brain to move rapidly back and forth. This sudden movement can cause the brain to bounce around or twist in the skull, creating chemical changes in the brain and sometimes stretching and damaging brain cells.”

In the blog I will be looking at the progressive impact of concussions and how they relate to the most relevant modules of psychology discussed in my Psych 101 class along with my story within it all.

Timeline of Concussion Research

1870: James Crichton-Browne chronicles the dangers of repeated head injuries, advising that those who suffer a concussion should avoid subsequent head trauma.

1928: Pathologist Harrison Martland publishes a paper using the boxing vernacular “punch drunk” to describe the chronic neurodegenerative condition observed in fighters, introducing the concept of cumulative sports head trauma to the scientific community.

1940s: Seminal early research on concussive and subconcussive brain trauma is carried out at Boston City Hospital by researchers like Derek Denny-Brown.

1952: Harvard physician Augustus Thorndike formally proposes that suffering three concussions in a collision sport should be grounds for medical retirement from that sport.

1975: Researchers Gronwall and Wrightson suggest that the effects of concussions are cumulative and that sporting authorities need to address the long-term impact.

1982: The NCAA establishes the Injury Surveillance System to officially track injury trends, including concussions, in collegiate sports.

1994: The NFL creates the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI) Committee, though it is initially criticized for downplaying the long-term risks and severity of football-related concussions. The NCAA officially adopts guidelines outlining protocols for returning to play after a concussion.

2000: The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) establishes the first free-standing concussion program in the U.S. and aids in the widespread rollout of ImPACT, a computerized neurocognitive test to evaluate baseline brain function and track recovery.

2001: The First International Congress on Sports Concussion is held in Vienna, producing a standardized, modern medical definition for concussions and making neuropsychological testing a cornerstone of management.

2002: Pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu examines the brain of deceased NFL Hall of Famer Mike Webster. He discovers severe protein accumulations and brain damage, formally naming the condition Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).

2003: “The NCAA Concussion Study” by Kevin Guskiewicz and Michael McCrea is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Tracking over 4,200 player-seasons, it becomes a foundational study for modern sports concussion protocols.

2006: UPMC researchers receive millions in CDC and NIH grants to correlate functional MRI scans with cognitive testing and to develop pediatric-specific testing tools.

2014: The NCAA and the U.S. Department of Defense launch the Concussion Assessment, Research and Education (CARE) Consortium. As the largest longitudinal concussion study in history, it tracks over 50,000 athletes and cadets to analyze the neurobiology, biomarkers, and long-term trajectory of mild traumatic brain injuries.

Brain Basics and Concussion Impact

The Central Nervous System:

The central nervous system (CNS) consists of the brain and the spinal cord. It serves as the ultimate control center, regulating our internal world while processing contact with the outside world.

The Anatomy of an Impact
Contact sports put massive strain on the central nervous system. Every hit takes a toll. Over time, repeated collisions physically wear down the brain.

This is why proper demands, like the NFL’s concussion protocol, force pulling a player from the game immediately after a heavy impact. You aren’t just checking for a concussion or a bruise. You are shielding the brain’s main control center from compounding damage.

Neurons and Myelin
The brain runs on roughly 100 billion neurons. For an athlete, processing speed relies on two parts of these cells. Dendrites receive the incoming signals. Axons send them out.

These axon cables are wrapped in a protective layer called the myelin sheath. Think of it like insulation on a wire. It keeps signals moving at lightning speed.

What happens when that myelin is damaged? Look at Multiple Sclerosis. MS strips this insulation away. The result is severe muscle spasms and a total loss of balance. A concussion is a different type of injury, but the MS comparison is useful. It shows exactly what happens when the brain’s wiring takes a hit. Signals stall. Physical function breaks down. Athletic performance drops.

Synaptic Misfires: The Short-Circuit
Neurons talk to each other across a tiny gap called a synapse. This communication relies on a perfectly balanced mix of electrical and chemical signals.

Then, a hard hit happens.

The sheer physical force completely scrambles that balance. It triggers a temporary short-circuit in the brain’s communication network. This sudden misfire is exactly why athletes experience immediate disorientation. Memory gaps form. The intense psychological distress begins.

Plasticity

The silver lining in concussion research lies in the concept of plasticity. Plasticity is the mechanism by which we learn new information, but it is also how the brain adapts and recovers from damage. While the physical deterioration from repetitive impacts is a serious medical reality, the brain’s inherent ability to rewire itself is what makes proper recovery protocols. Resting the CNS and avoiding subsequent hits, are vital to an athlete’s long-term health and psychological well-being.

How Concussions Distort Sensation and Perception:

When an athlete suffers a concussion, the impact isn’t just physical, it fundamentally alters how they experience the world around them. To understand the psychological toll of these injuries, we have to look at the crucial difference between sensation and perception, and what happens when that system breaks down.

Sensation is the raw data. It is the light hitting your eyes or the sound entering your ears. Perception is how your brain interprets that data so it makes sense.

A concussion rarely breaks the physical “hardware,” like your actual eyes or ears. Instead, it severely corrupts the brain’s “software.” Here is how that disruption warps an athlete’s reality.

The Vestibular System:

Athletes rely heavily on their vestibular system. A system that is necessary for balance. Working with the inner ear and visual cues, it tells the brain exactly where the body is in space.

The Concussion Effect: A brain injury knocks these signals completely out of sync. It causes profound dizziness, vertigo, and a total loss of coordination. For an athlete used to supreme physical control, suddenly losing spatial awareness is deeply disorienting and terrifying.

Sensory Overload: Light and Sound a concussion drastically alters the brain’s threshold for sensory input. The brain essentially loses its ability to filter out the noise. This is the first sign of a minor concussion, you become significant more irritable.

Light Sensitivity: Normal stadium lights or a sunny day suddenly cause blinding pain. The visual cortex struggles to manage the incoming light waves, turning normal brightness into a harsh, overwhelming glare.
Sound Sensitivity: A referee’s whistle or a cheering crowd feels deafening. The auditory processing centers can no longer tune out background noise, making a normal gym feel utterly chaotic.

The Gate-Control Theory of Pain Think of the spinal cord as a neurological “gate.” It either blocks pain signals or lets them pass through to the brain.

The Concussion Effect: A severe hit can essentially wedge this gate wide open. This leads to chronic, relentless headaches and neck pain. Living with constant pain drains an athlete’s mental energy, shortens their temper, and drastically increases the risk of depression.

The Psychological Toll When perception breaks down, the world becomes a hostile place. The field or court an athlete once dominated is suddenly too bright, too loud, and physically disorienting. They aren’t just “resting a bumped head.” They are actively fighting to recalibrate their reality. Recognizing this sensory chaos is the first step to providing proper emotional support during their recovery.

We usually talk about concussions as a strictly biological problem. We focus on the brain, the nerves, the physical impact. But a head injury doesn’t happen doesn’t have a singular physical impact. For professional athletes it adds pressure to what happens under stadium lights. Its effects can spread beyond the concussed person particularly within a highly competitive team culture. To grasp the true psychological toll of these injuries, we have to look past the biology and examine the social impacts at play.

HIM (2025) a horror movie by Jordan Peele touches on the psychological impact of the intense contact sport of American Football.

The Fundamental Attribution Error:

When a player takes a hard hit, their behavior often changes. They might act suddenly angry, sluggish, or totally unmotivated. This often triggers a cognitive bias known as the fundamental attribution error, the tendency to blame a person’s personality for their actions instead of looking at their situation.

Think about it from a coach’s perspective. It’s incredibly easy to bench a player for “being difficult” or having a bad attitude after a heavy collision. The reality is the physical brain injury is actually driving that erratic behavior. All too often, bystanders completely mistake serious medical symptoms for character flaws.

Locus of Control:

Athletes survive on an internal locus of control. They fiercely believe they are in charge of their own lives and destinies.

A severe concussion violently strips that away. Suddenly, the athlete is forced into an external locus of control. They are completely sidelined. They feel like things are just happening to them, and they are entirely at the mercy of the injury. This jarring loss of autonomy leaves them feeling powerless which is a major reason why injured athletes so often spiral into depression.

Normative Social Influence:

Why do players hide their concussions?

It usually boils down to normative social influence. In simple terms, this is peer pressure, the intense desire to fit in, gain group approval, and avoid being rejected. For professional athletes they could face contractual and financial pressures. If they do not play in certain amount of games they do not get paid their entire contract. This not only makes people play through legitimate or non-head pain but also, and more often, concussive symptoms.

Contact sports often glorify “warriors” who play through the pain. So, a concussed athlete might “conform” to that expectation and hide their pain. They do this because they are terrified of looking “weak” or losing the respect of their team. Ultimately, this intense need for group approval creates a deeply entrenched culture of silence, actively stopping athletes from reporting dangerous, life-threatening symptoms.

My Story

Having played contact sports my whole life and at competitive levels it was almost a guarantee to have been in vulnerable situations to concussions. However, across my athletic career I generally avoided major head injuries until my senior year of high school where my situation compounded. Across my senior year I sustained two concussions as seen in the videos below.

I had the symptoms I discussed in the sensation and perception section. Immediately knew in both instances of immense sensitivity to light and sound that I had a concussion. I cannot and definability could not have understood just how a concussion could impact the basics on my brain but I felt it was relevant to include because it gives a elementary understanding how the brain in a concussive states work. However to me the most relevant module was Social Psychology. Many times the social symptoms of a concussion are the most impactful. You miss out on playing sports with your friends, you get behind in school and you feel helpless, falling into uncontrollable external locus of control. This leads to a depression that otherwise would have occurred.

I don’t believe the compounding nature of my injuries were any coincidence. I perhaps wasn’t fully recovered from my first concussion only one month after. I was a senior in high school stressing about what school I would go to, saying goodbye to my friends, prom, leaving home, final exams that I could have taken a more sensitive approach to recovery, but didn’t. However this is the dilemma many athletes face. There will only be so many opportunities to play for your high school or competitively in general and many, like me, feel that Normative Social Influence discussed in the Social Psychology section. I have had various physical injuries. For me, my concussion have been most challenging to deal with. For these reasons is why I have incorporated my research for concussions my psych studies.

Concussion 1

Concussion 2, 1 month after Concussion 1

Mitigation Techniques

Most professional athletes are equipped with the highest amount of resources to recover from a concussion that everyday people do not have access to. Attached below is a video from the CDC that me and my parents watched when I experienced a concussion. It was helpful and reassuring hopefully it can help anyone that needs it.