The NFL and the Woodpecker Brain
September 8, 2011
by Ignatius Vincent Trochlear
"The brain, that pound and a half of chicken-colored goo so highly regarded (by the brain itself), that slimy organ to which is attributed such intricate and mysterious powers (it is the self-same brain that does the attributing), the brain is so weak that, without its protective casing to support it, it simply collapses of its own weight.”
-Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
In the honor of the start of football season, I thought it might be interesting to consider concussions and the brain and draw inferences from a well designed animal in nature. If you hear that pitter-patter on wood in the morning striking like two hollow bones rattled together, you know it’s a woodpecker jabbing his beak into a tree trunk. The question is, how does a bird like the woodpecker repeatedly bash its face into a solid piece of wood (and in some cases concrete) and suffer no repercussions, much less concussions?
A human can create a massive piece of solid plastic armor with plush cushion inside, then create a piece of leather that encloses air, and then throw that piece of leather to another human, who catches it while getting smashed by yet another human, and their brain goes thwack - complete darkness, losing consciousness. This effect has strange consequences. A friend of mine once had three interceptions and 20 tackles at middle linebacker in the second half of a high school game and doesn't remember it at all. The coaches blamed dehydration - but it might have been the smack that he took in a helmet to helmet hit at the end of the first half when playing running back on the goalline team.
Injury to the brain can cause symptoms that linger for years. Merrill Hoge, a former running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers is ultra sensitive to light and prefers dim environments. Some people feel sleep disturbances, others can have disruptions in taste and smell, headaches, dizziness. The list goes on. Former Bears Quarterback Jim McMahon is suing the NFL for putting players in concussive positions. And it isn't just the NFL - soldiers are coming back from the Middle East experiencing similar symptoms - their armor protects them from all injury except to the brain.
A study looking at the instance of injury after the advent of the modern helmet in the NFL has shown there has been a significant increase in injuries to the upper part of the spinal cord (cervical spine) since players started using the helmet. A study on the increase or decrease of concussions since the helmet has been used hasn’t been done, as taking note of a concussion and making the diagnosis hasn’t evolved until relatively recently. However, the prevailing theory is that the helmet has made players more reckless and less cautious, and the cervical spine study is evidence of this. So, maybe it would be wise to go without helmets like in Rugby - maybe players would be more cautious and fewer concussions would result. Well, that doesn't seem to be the case - according to this article - the incidence of concussions in rugby is the same as in the NFL. So although evidence exists for fewer cervical spine injuries without helmets, it doesn't for concussions, and without armor in the early 20th century, the game was so grotesquely violent President Teddy Roosevelt got in on the mix to curb the violence and spur the use of leather helmets. So what to do about the problem, is there any way to avoid it?
There were 45 concussions through week 6 last year, and Deadspin compiled a list of the players and a video of many of the unfortunate incidents. Another reason these instances are so unsettling is that dementia seems to be a future side effect in some cases. One of the first questions from a neurologist if someone is developing Alzheimer’s is whether they ever sustained a concussion or head injury. Our species is particular susceptible to brain injury, but we are also a notoriously resourceful member of the animal world. Which brings us back to the woodpecker. A resourceful animal like us must be able to figure out how to stop these injuries by looking at an animal that can wack its head without problems.
The woodpecker routinely pecks about 22 times per second and experiences g-forces of about 1200 G. The equivalent for a human would be to crash into a wall going about 29,000 mph. In which case, we would die. And since technology doesn’t exist to go about Mach 40, that isn’t happening anytime soon anyway. We need to harness the secret behind its ability to withstand this kind of impact.
If you are sitting in a chair, relaxing with a book, you are experiencing a g-force of 1. The force of gravity is exerting itself on your body, but no other forces are present. Astronauts that are on the now defunct space shuttle, experience 3.5 Gs during take off. Blue Angels pilots can get up to 5 gs. There is a graying effect on eyesight at 5 gs, and usually at 10 gs, people will lose consciousness because of the lack of blood flow to areas of the brain that are responsible for keeping us awake. But… to experience a concussion, where actual damage happens to the brain and you lose consciousness, you need to experience g-forces between 80-100. So for us, 1200 g would not be good, much less 22 times a second.
Some other info about the woodpecker: Their beak is flexible as well as sturdy; and they have extremely bizarre tongue muscles and bones that wrap from their jaw, around the bottom of their skull and up over their head; their brains are packed much tighter in their skull than a human brain - a human brain sloshes around like an orange in a bucket - so when impact happens, the brain will slosh forward and smash into the inside of the skull, and bruise; woodpecker brains are also longer from top to bottom, unlike human brains, which are longer from front to back; woodpecker brains sit up in the back of their skull, above the plane the beak is on; woodpecker brains are relatively small for a bird and the beak can be four times as long as the brain; the woodpecker always hits straight on, it has a spongy piece of tissue behind the beak to absorb the shock, almost like padding in a helmet.
A human hits its head in all manner of directions, because we have no say in how we get hit on our head at all. There is no way to predict it, and therefore, no place to put a flexible 'beak' to withstand the impact. This causes an injury to neurons in the brain because of rotational forces. The neurons in the cortex have axons that are tethered to them. These axon bundles are of different density and therefore rotate after a crack on the head less readily than the spongy neuron cell bodies, and they get spun around like the tether on a tetherball - eventually shearing and breaking, damaging the neurons and the brain.
A lot of times scientists use what they see in nature to create advances for humankind – the cocklebur and Velcro is just one example. To mimic the dynamics of the woodpecker on the human in football - we could have a four foot 'beak facemask' in front of the players faces, and the defenders would only be allowed to tackle them from straight on. It might be an interesting rule change. Scores would be in the hundreds. I feel like Ed Reed would still be successful.
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