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A decline in severe football injuries and fatalities after the 1970s helped make it possible for another concern to come into focus: that trauma to players’ brains, even if it did not result in death or catastrophic injury, might still constitute a serious medical problem. In the early 1990s, the National Football League (NFL) found itself under scrutiny after a spate of high-profile head injuries among its prominent athletes. In response, the league formed a committee on mild traumatic brain injury that not only minimized the severity of concussions among NFL players, but also influenced perceptions of risk at the youth football level. Yet in the late 2000s, several factors contributed to making football-related brain injuries at all levels of the sport a topic of national debate. These included autopsy findings in deceased NFL players, retired athletes speaking out about their medical problems, extensive media coverage, and an emerging framing of football-related brain damage as a public health concern that had been covered up by the NFL.

This chapter is comprised of 30 clinically based and also knowledge based questions, and answers. The corresponding answers to the questions can be found at the end of the chapter, each of which has a short explanation and at least one reference.

In this chapter we review magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The work reviewed spans multiple analytical approaches, including task-evoked and induced studies, primarily examining cognitive and behavioral dysfunction in the disorder, as well as resting-state studies of regional oscillatory power and synchrony. Disordered memory, elevated threat perception, and dysfunctional emotional control are primary symptoms of PTSD, but there are also secondary “knock-on” effects to cognition and executive functioning that can be debilitating. MEG approaches have proved to be a powerful way to examine maladaptive neural circuits underlying these deficits in PTSD, particularly the brain networks involving the hippocampi, amygdalae, and ventral medial prefrontal cortex. Finally, the authors briefly discuss these findings in relation to mild traumatic brain injury, a physical as opposed to psychological injury that can nevertheless leave mental wounds that exhibit a similar presentation to PTSD, and how MEG can be used to tease apart these different types of trauma.

Properly evaluating a use of force requires a working knowledge of the various force options. This chapter identifies two particularly relevant characteristics of any given option: how it works and its likely effects. With that framework in mind, readers are provided with a description of the tools, techniques, and weaponry that officers employ in use-of-force situations. From handcuffs to “flashbang” concussion grenades, from takedowns to chokeholds, from batons to electronic control weapons, and from firearms to experimental weaponry, just to name a few, this chapter provides detailed information about the nature of each force option, how it is generally taught and used in the policing context, and its attendant risks.

The concluding chapter examines narratives that threaten to disrupt both professional football’s immense profits and the ideological formation that has been advanced through its image. This challenge to dominant meanings, which has become increasingly pronounced in recent years, is a reassessment of football’s violence in the wake of revelations of devastating brain injuries among former players and of acts of sexual violence by NFL players.

Concussion management policies have become a major priority worldwide for sports that involve frequent collisions between participants because repeated head trauma has been associated with long-term cognitive impairments, mental health problems, and some forms of neurological degeneration. A number of concussion management policies have been developed by professional bodies and subsequently adopted by various sporting leagues. These have offered little guidance on how to navigate ethical issues in identifying and managing concussion. This chapter discusses ethical issues that arise in the diagnosis of concussion, debates about the longer-term consequences of repeated concussion injuries, and the design and implementation of policies that aim to prevent and manage concussion injuries in sporting matches.

Research on the psychological aspects of sport injury has flourished over the past 30 years. Evidence suggests that a variety of intra- (e.g., stress, motivation, self-efficacy beliefs) and interpersonal (e.g., patient-practitioner relationships, social support) factors play a key role in injury risk, rehabilitation, and return to play. In the present chapter, we first synthesize cutting-edge research on psychological factors influencing musculoskeletal and concussive injury risk, rehabilitation, and return to play. We argue that scholarship on the psychological aspects of sport injuries has traditionally been siloed and/or limited in focus. The second section of the chapter expounds upon five major research questions designed to advance theory, methods, and injury-related practice. These research questions are put forth in the hope that they can contribute to the continued growth and interest in research around the psychological aspects of musculoskeletal and concussive injury.

The role of technology in neuropsychological practice has expanded dramatically in recent years, and its presence and evolving nature provide both exciting opportunities and sizeable risks that challenge practitioners ethically. Computerized test administration, scoring, and interpretation are now so common that is it hard to imagine a neuropsychologist’s practice that does not incorporate some combination of these technologies. Some of the most commonly used measures have become so complex or offer so many variables to consider that their scoring and interpretation would be extremely difficult, if not prohibitive, without the use of technology. Additionally, assessment of some cognitive constructs, such as sustained attention or response time, typically requires a computer for administration. Without computers for assessing such constructs, the understanding of the test taker’s cognitive abilities would be limited, and the decision to forgo use of such measures would not be consistent with optimal practice. Some referral sources, particularly in forensic contexts, specifically require the use of measures that are computer-administered, scored, and/or interpreted. Finally, computers, or other technologic devices, such as tablets, are now widely used by practitioners for completing and storing reports and other documentation, and telecommunications like email are commonly used for transmitting reports. Thus, technology now permeates the practice of clinical neuropsychology and will likely continue to do so forever. Even practitioners who prefer to limit use of technology must accept that it is here and is here to stay. This is not a bad thing. There are many advantages to the use of digital assessment and data storage. As Wahlstrom (in press) stated: After decades of incremental technological advancements, neuropsychology is beginning to see a rapid expansion of digital applications available to clinicians. In the short-term, these applications promise to replace paper materials and will make testing more efficient, accurate, and engaging for both the examinee and examiner.

Using both SF literature and film, this chapter indicates age as the clearest challenge to the social construction of the embodied athlete. Within age studies, such constructions often display an escapist quality—the desire to avoid aging and death, to posit aging as a narrative that may be re-written—also sometimes reflected in the fantastic. In much science fiction, however, one also sees a mindful acceptance of the embodied limitations that age places upon us, even in the figures of athletes so often held up as the epitome of youth and health. These limitations are explored in a wide variety of sf literature.