In the new movie Concussion, Will Smith plays a neuropathologist who performed a game-changing autopsy on former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster in 2002. After a career in which Webster earned four Super Bowl rings and a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he suffered from memory loss, depression, and dementia, was homeless at times, and died at age 50. (The movie is based on a GQ article that describes Webster’s psychiatric symptoms, including “pissing in his oven and squirting Super Glue on his rotting teeth.”) When the neuropathologist, Bennet Omalu, analyzed Webster’s brain tissue, he discovered clumps of tau proteins, generally associated with neuro degeneration. In 2005, he published a paper arguing that Webster had suffered from what he recognized as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, brought on by more than two decades of brain battering on the field.
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