Concussions with Leonard Marshall

How is CTE different from a concussion? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly discuss concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, with former NFL lineman, Leonard Marshall, and neuroscientist, Heather Berlin, PhD.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition, and today we're gonna talk about concussion. Yeah, we have to do it. Somebody's gotta do it. We're going there today. And of course, I've got Chuck Nice, one of my co-hosts. Chuck?

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  What's up, Neil?

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right. Every time I hear, I have to list you as comedian and actor, and I haven't seen you act in anything, just between you and me.

• 0:38Chuck Nice?

  Well, see, that's how great of an actor I am.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't even know it's you.

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  You don't even know it's me! Like, I thought that was Michael B. Jordan. What? That was Chuck Nice?

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right, maybe that's it. And of course, Gary O'Reilly. Gary, former soccer pro in the UK.

• 0:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Gary, you felt compelled, we could not keep doing StarTalk Sports Edition without hitting this topic. So why don't you give us the full intro that this needs and requires? So what's going on today?

• 1:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you. Right, CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a degenerative brain disease caused mainly by repeated traumas to the head. Now, concussions are the most dramatic of those, but it could be from years of heading a football. It could be from smaller contacts. It could be from contact sports like boxing or maybe American.

• 1:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But when you said heading a football, you mean heading a soccer ball? Because this is America Jack.

• 1:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Round football.

• 1:40Chuck Nice?

  Our footballs aren't round.

• 1:44Chuck Nice?

  We don't have round footballs here.

• 1:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, they are.

• 1:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if a ball hits a football player in the head, there's something wrong happening in that play.

• 1:53Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, so if I say soccer, I get pushed back. If I say football, I get pushed back.

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true, that's true.

• 2:00Gary O'Reilly?

  It's, you know, it's a square ball. Look, the thing is, CTE is not particularly well-understood. And up until recently, diagnosis took place sadly through autopsy.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh.

• 2:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Imagine. Symptoms, right? Symptoms can appear years or even decades after the last head trauma occurred and can present, and this is spooky, really.

• 2:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Memory loss, severe headaches, erratic behaviour and tragically suicidal tendencies.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 2:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Now Neil, this literally hits home for me. I had fourteen years as a pro. I didn't just head a soccer ball, I practised heading.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you did it even when you, oh, oh, yes.

• 2:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Because there's, there's a technique, there's a way to do certain things in a certain way. So this is interesting deeply for me. Now our clinical expertise will come from our good friend and neuroscientist Dr Heather Berlin, who will join us later in the show, but let's meet somebody. Um, nine years ago, this person was diagnosed with CTE. And I want us to listen to their story and hopefully walk away from this podcast having learnt something and having become enlightened on a subject that is only in the last few years receiving the attention it deserves. So I would like to introduce our guest, Leonard Marshall.

• 3:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Now, if that name sounds familiar, this is a two-time Super Bowl champion. This is a two-time Pro Bowler, two-time NFL Defensive Lineman of the Year. That's not where it ends. He's also been a professor of sports management at Seton Hall-Stillman School of Business. He's an advocate for athletes who are suffering from CTE. And he went toe-to-toe with the NFL to win a class action case to get money for other players who aren't as affluent but are suffering all the same. He's also an entrepreneur, he's also a philanthropist, as well as a CBD advocate. Neil?

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh.

• 4:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Don't have a chat with Leonard.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leonard, welcome to StarTalk, dude.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  Hey, thank you very much for having me, Gary. What a great introduction and I sincerely appreciate that and some of the touching points that you, uh, that you eloquently talked about.

• 4:20Gary O'Reilly?

  If it wasn't true, I wouldn't say it.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Nope, that's true.

• 4:22Gary O'Reilly?

  I would.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Leonard, you got here a book titled When the Cheering Stops.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, oh my gosh, I mean, that's a, what a title of a book that is. I mean, you know, it's, it's almost as though whatever are my worst thoughts, that's what's going to be in that book. And so what, at what point were you motivated to say more people have to know about what has happened to me?

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Two thousand seven, two thousand nine, Neil, I began having issues. I felt with traumatic brain injury. I started receiving phone calls from friends of mine around the league, guys that I played with and against. And, uh, and several of those guys were, they were kind of stuck. They, they felt like they didn't have an outlet. They were having some real problems at home. They weren't able to articulate what was going on because they really didn't know what was going on. All they knew is, you know, when they played the game and they were concussed in the game, they were told just what every other tough guy is told, rub a little dirt on it,

• 5:37Speaker 03

  you know, rest a little bit and go home back in there and do what you do. Well, that just doesn't work well with three hundred and ten, twenty pound lineman in the National Football League when men are playing for months. It just doesn't, doesn't work that way. So I didn't find out till, I'm going to say a cool ten, twelve, fourteen years after the game, uh, was over for me, uh, because my career ended in nineteen ninety six. And, uh, I became a dad in nineteen ninety five. The entire time that I'm going through this process,

• 6:10Speaker 03

  I'm a hundred percent concerned about what's going to happen to my little girl if I'm unable to be her father. What is my wife going to do when she has to take care of not only my child, but me too? And then. What is the league going to do to make sure that the quality of my life does not diminish? Because the one thing you don't get when you leave pro football is health insurance benefits. You get 18 months of Cobra, and if you don't go into private business or you're not smart enough to connect yourself with a company to gavely become employed, you will have the biggest

• 6:51Speaker 03

  problem in the world in trying to find an insurance carrier that will underwrite you after a career in the National Football League because you're bringing baggage.

• 6:59Chuck Nice?

  Is it still that way? Is it? It's still that way. I remember some time ago during a player negotiation with the owners that that was on the table, some form of healthcare. And they quashed it, like, the owners, they just quashed it right away. This is something that they really are adamantly against.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're not getting, Chuck, you're not getting that 40% of the mule when you retire and you walk away. It's not gonna happen.

• 7:29Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  And I don't know why, I don't know why, that the predecessors that continue to be involved in professional football, they haven't taken a stronger stance on that, especially for the guys that built the game, like myself, like the household names of guys that you knew and know of, doing your genre of work and everything else. So, it just, it just doesn't make any sense.

• 7:54Chuck Nice?

  By the way, you were a household name in my house because you played for the Giants, and I'm an Eagles fan, so we just hated you.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 8:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and you know why? Because he ate quarterbacks, you know what I mean? Leonard was like third time in the Giants' history or something like that, the third of all time, and most of those sacks were against the Philadelphia Eagles. So, thanks a lot.

• 8:19Gary O'Reilly?

  So, the thing here, Neil, is what Leonard said reminds me of a wonderful phrase, and I can't remember who is the author of this, but standing on the shoulders of Giants.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, that's Isaac Newton. That's Isaac Newton said that, yes, okay.

• 8:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you. There you go.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I can see farther than others, it's because I've stood on the shoulders of Giants who've come before me. Right.

• 8:43Gary O'Reilly?

  And Giants like Leonard. And and he's respectful of those that came before him. And it's a it's a it's a it's a heritage and a lineage that should be carried forward.

• 8:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Absolutely.

• 8:54Gary O'Reilly?

  And people need to learn to look backward sometimes and not just.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But also, I just want to add, if if, correct me if I'm wrong, Leonard.

• 9:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Sure.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Football careers relative to tennis, soccer, baseball are notoriously short. Because you can't do that, you know, at late into your life. As in thirties and early forties, the way many baseball players do. So the many football players, again, correct me if I'm wrong, this is just my understanding. Are not the the marquee players that make the zillion dollars that are household names. Most of them are are are are service players filling out the team. And so and so they don't then have these huge financial reserves. To then carry them out for the rest of their lives. Is that an accurate characterization?

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, accurate characterization. When I played the game from nineteen eighty three to ninety six, because keep in mind. I went through two strikes in the NFL. Um, I went to the strike in eighty seven. I went through the strike in ninety two, which granted us free agency. So I'm one of the pillars of what you see now in terms of in terms of uh. Compensation players are being paid. Let's just put it like this. For the Giants to put my team on the field that won the Super Bowl in nineteen eighty six. They would have to borrow money from the Jets today.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  Right, because there's no way you're gonna have. Two defensive players side by side like Chuck talked about. Lawrence Taylor and Leonard Marshall with over two hundred quarterback sacks between them. And a middle linebacker in Harry Carson, who's also a Hall of Fame linebacker. On the same defense along with George Martin and Carl Banks and Jim Burke. There's those seven guys, they will never be seven players on the field at the same time. On a team like that ever again, they just don't have the money to do it. Don't have the compensation.

• 10:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Leonard, let me ask you a question.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 10:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Because you had seven hundred and fourteen tackles during your NFL career.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 10:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Right? How many times did you get tackled? How many times did you get hit? And should that actually go down now? As a stat that people recognize.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Well, I could tell you this, i- i- if you want to talk about getting dinged in a football game, I could tell you how many times I got dinged. Now, dinged to me is when you get hit, or you have a head-to-head collision and you get up and you don't know where you're at.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  I couldn't tell you how many times that happened, okay?

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, Leonard, Leonard, and you calling that just a ding?

• 11:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's gotta be a worse word for that.

• 11:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, uh, it's called, it's called life-changing event in my life.

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They got banged upside the head. Come on, Leonard.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  You gotta remember.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me a word for that.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's a proud, tough guy who, who were playing a game for money. And the, the thing is, if you show softness,

• 11:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  guys will come after you.

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 11:49Chuck Nice?

  They say getting your bell rung. You got your bell rung.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Get your bell rung.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  And I'm like, what is it? The Liberty Bell? Cause God.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:58Gary O'Reilly?

  See, the thing, the thing is, if, if you show the weakness, not only are you lit up for your opponents, but your coach is looking and all the coaches around him is looking. And you don't get to play in the next game. It's survival.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  I had a nut job of a coach by the name of Lamar Leachman from Cartersville, Georgia. Let, let me tell you something. This guy, he, he looked like Herky Rock from the first. He had a curly Afro. He talked like he was black. He was, he was a five foot eight, five foot nine white guy from Cartersville, Georgia that, that was, I, I, it just looked like Herky Rock, man. He had these big old arms, little bitty legs. They would, he was knocking me and, uh,

• 12:39Speaker 03

  it was just the funniest, I don't want to swear on it, but it was the funniest thing you had to see, man. And, and, and he'd walk around and he'd tease guys. He'd go, oh, what happened to you? You're pretty? You were too, you were too sad on that play.

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man, there it is.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  And knock the living, I don't know what, uh.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  You know, you had guys like that.

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so let me, I can quantify this, cause I did a calculation, all right? So, so you were six, you, you were six-four, um, and how far, how fast did you run a forty?

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Four point seven seconds.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and, and you came in at what?

• 13:15Speaker 03

  Me, me.

• 13:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At beep.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  I came in the NFL, I weighed 290 pounds. I slimmed down, I was, I was at 18% body fat. I went down to almost 9% body fat, 282 pounds, and I could bench press 500 pounds and squat almost 800 pounds.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 13:34Speaker 03

  And I'm telling you, when, when my, my coach had a motto, when hit, the body will bend or break. His deal was, he wanted to see if somebody could knock a player, hit a player so hard that he could knock him into the middle of next Tuesday.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so here's the thing. I did a calculation, all right? So, there's the energy of a bullet fired from a rifle. So the AK-47, which is a high muzzle velocity rifle, we've all heard of it, used for most of the rest of the world, and you can add how much energy's in that bullet. And it turns out, you, running into a quarterback, okay, at 15 miles an hour, okay, not even as fast as you can run, just as fast as might be common, and you hit a quarterback, it is the same amount of kinetic energy as a bullet fired from an AK-47 weapon.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The difference is, of course, all the energy of the bullet is entering just a single hole that it puts in your body, and it rips out your organs and, and it can kill you. Your energy is now spread, it's the same energy, but it's spread over the entire body of the person. So, just to think about this, that, that energy would normally kill someone in one spot, but now it's spread over, so the whole body's participating and absorbing the energy, and that can't be good, is what I'm saying.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  You just touched on the reason why I could hate Bill from San Francisco to Dayton.

• 15:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, because of Joe.

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Joe Montana.

• 15:09Gary O'Reilly?

  What Joe should, yeah, what Joe should realize is, it's a good thing that Leonard is as big as he is.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  No, so what?

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I see what little or he be dead is what you.

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I see what you did there.

• 15:24Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see what.

• 15:27Chuck Nice?

  It's a good one, Kerry.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good.

• 15:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  I know. Don't worry. I'll spin him.

• 15:32Chuck Nice?

  How do we? How do we get somebody very little to hit Tom Brady?

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta take him. My, my boy hates Tom Brady.

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just because everybody's whipping the Phillies ass all the time. I mean.

• 15:44Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, well, we beat, we beat, we beat the Eagles.

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:48Chuck Nice?

  I just will never forgive him. He took our first Super Bowl from in my life.

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Took it from you. It was yours, right? He took it from you. We gotta take a break. Leonard, uh, when we come back more on this subject and we're gonna set up the whole, uh, uh, table so that when Heather comes in, uh, our neuroscientist in the third segment, um, she'll put a bow on all of this. And I just want to tell everyone that Heather brought you to us. You already know Heather. And this is, this is just, just spend it like 30 seconds, how, how you found her and how you know each other?

• 16:22Speaker 03

  I got introduced to Heather by a, a, an organization called Carrying Kind, which is in New York City, which I'm being honored for my work in ALS, a traumatic brain injury. And, um, a young lady by the name of Courtney Dawson, thought it would be good for me to talk to Heather because of my life, the traumatic brain injury I'm dealing with and the fact that CTE dominates my life now. And, uh, I combat it and fight it with marijuana and, uh, and CBD and, um, you know, that's.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:49Chuck Nice?

  By the way, that's the same reason I combat my problems.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's what you're marijuana. Okay.

• 16:57Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's what I tell everybody. I'm like, I'm fighting, man. I'm fighting problems.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got your own thing. All right.

• 17:05Chuck Nice?

  I'm just trying to help Leonard Marshall out.

• 17:09Chuck Nice?

  I need you.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. When we come back more with our Super Bowl NFL great, uh, Leonard Marshall, we're talking about concussions on StarTalk Sports Edition.

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about concussions, and in particular, concussions in the NFL. And we've got somebody who is an NFL great by any metric, who had sustained and persistent "dings," as he called them. This is a head hit in the NFL where you don't quite know where you are when you get up.

• 17:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And our man is here with us today, and it's Leonard Marshall, again, for a second segment here. Leonard, thanks for giving us this piece of your life and telling us what happened to you and how and why.

• 18:10Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, Leonard, just to let you know, the insurance companies actually used to allow you to determine how bad an accident was. They would say, describe, and anybody who caused the accident would be like, "Oh, it's a ding. It's just a ding." Right? And the person who received the accident was like, "No, my car is totaled. My car is totaled." You know, and now they say, "Do the airbags deploy?" That's how they determine it.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, there it is, there it is. So, Leonard, you finished your career, what year was that? 1996?

• 18:45Speaker 03

  1994 was my, 94 was my last active season. My child was born in 1995. In 96, I decided to hang it up.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. And so, years later, five, six years later, you went to UCLA for a diagnosis of your condition that would normally be identified via autopsy. This is freaky, that's a freaky fact. Was there some new way to make the measurement? Or did you just sort of force, force it in on people and say, "Look, something's going on. Invent some new test, because otherwise, I don't want you to do this after I'm dead."

• 19:25Speaker 03

  This is great how this happened. So I got a phone call from my little brother, who happened to be teammates with Rodney Hampton and Otis Anderson. And those two guys were like very close to me. One was with me in Super Bowl eighty twenty one. And then, and one was with me with two both twenty five. And then the other was just with me in two or twenty five. So one, I played two championships. One, I played one championship. They told me about a program that was going on, an attorney out of Pittsburgh that I needed to speak to. My name is Jason Lukasevic from a law firm, Goldberg, Perskin, White. He said, there's a program that's being implemented by Dr. Bennett Amalu. Dr. Amalu happened to be a neuropathologist from Allegheny County in Pennsylvania,

• 20:10Speaker 03

  and working alongside of Jason Lukasevic's brother in that department, studying brains and autopsies of brains. Long story short, Jason said, hey, Leonard, ESPN is partnering with Tom Mark to do this brain scan at UCLA at the Nancy Rega Center. Are you interested? I said, well, who else was involved? He said, well, Joe Delamalor, Hall of Famer, Mark Duper, potential Hall of Famer, and Tony Dorsett, Hall of Famer. Would you be interested in going? I said, count me in. We take the trip to LA, we go through the Tom Mark process. The process was put in place to determine CTE in the living. Everyone kept saying, there's no way you could do and, and perform CTE in the living

• 20:55Speaker 03

  or obtain the information to collectively convey CTE in the living without having these scans and without having an autopsy of the brain. These guys proved it wrong, or to be wrong. And this group was based in Chicago, Illinois. So I took the trip. I kicked the tires. ESPN recorded the whole process. And at the end of the day, I came back, I had CTE.

• 21:23Gary O'Reilly?

  See, Dr. Amalo is the, the, the centrum of the film. I was gonna say, yeah, that sounded, yeah. Right. That's why, that's why you know the name. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Leonard, please describe to us what the doctors were looking for.

• 21:39Gary O'Reilly?

  And how they went about testing, we said about the MRI brain scan, but what else did they?

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because otherwise in an autopsy, they open your skull, pull out your brain, and put it through a meat slicer. They get a nice thin slice, and they look at it under the microscope, and they say, yup, he had, so I'm just glad they didn't, they had another way.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  Dude, me too Neil, I mean, here's what was funny Neil, they had the, they had a PET scan, they had a CAT scan, they injected me with dye. Also, I also did a neuropsych examination, an apnea test, and from that, yeah, to determine that, you know, his skill set is not where it should be, given his age, the number of years he played football, and what he's going through now. So I said, well fellas, what do we do with this? We came back in 2011, Jason said, Leonard, I just got through talking to Vernon Maxwell. Vernon Maxwell is down to file this lawsuit regarding a concussion claim. Are you interested in doing it?

• 22:44Speaker 03

  I said, I'm interested in doing it under one synopsis, that we do it on my daughter's birthday, so that if I forget, because of the abilitation of my brain, due to tall protein on my brain, and the tall protein dominate my brain, that my daughter can remember it, I want it on her birthday, that she'll know every year what her father stood.

• 23:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  That's what I did.

• 23:11Chuck Nice?

  Leonard, let me just say, on behalf of your daughter, it's a hell of a lot of pressure to put on me, man.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm joking.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  I said like this, you know, daddy doesn't make it for another seven, eight, nine, 10 years, baby, at least you know there'll be something there for you.

• 23:28Chuck Nice?

  No, no, I'm 100%. I think it's a great thing, it's, it makes your daughter a part of your legacy, which is exactly what you were doing, and I think that's fantastic.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I lost Reggie Robey, I lost Reggie Robey to this, I lost your eagle, my brother, Andre Waters to this. You know, you know, there's a couple other guys, I won't mention names because they're dealing with it now, but I could tell you that my friend... Who you know very well, um, uh, your middle linebacker, Mr. Seth Joyner, uh, was one of the guys that made me step out for Andre. Right, right. Because I had a con- conversation with him and I told him, I said, Seth, I'm in New York. My voice will carry some, it'll carry some weight, man.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  If I get behind this with my teammate, Harry Carson, we'll make enough noise that they'll listen. I said, you're in a little bit of a smaller market down in Philly. You know, it might not take it as serious, but go ahead, man. Make noise. That's your teammate. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. That's your teammate, so. Yeah, man.

• 24:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Neil, can I ask Neil this question?

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a quick, a quick second, Gary, and I want to, and I'm going to hand you a torch there.

• 24:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, sure, of course.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leonard, Gary's busting with a whole bunch of questions. I just want to make sure we're back on the same page in this second segment. Uh, when we think of a concussion, typically we think of a, a, a brain injury and the person doesn't know where they are and you gotta put them under observation for 12 hours. We're actually talking about something different here where it is the accumulation of smaller

• 25:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  brain trauma.

• 25:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, correct.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so it, and what makes it particularly pernicious is you just pop back from that not thinking you really should have sat out the rest of the game. And so, and you just keep going and this accumulates and then you get this condition. Am I, am I, are we on the same page here?

• 25:27Speaker 03

  You're on the same page.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  I mean, think of it this way, Neil. Now Chuck, you're a big football fan and I'm quite sure everybody else on here is. My teammate Lawrence Taylor was known for using his head and his head. Leading with your head. Leading with your head. So if you led as a defensive player with your head, you'd make contact. That's why if you look at football today, they teach you not to lead with your head. That's because the word and the, the word concussion has been taken out of football. We want CTE to be the word associated with football. Right. Because we want people to go to accumulation of hits, cause problems down the road. Right, right. It's one thing to get concussed, it's something else to have, you know, have the shakes and tretters and everything else associated with head trauma.

• 26:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. All right, so Gary, you, you're busting at the seams here. Go for it.

• 26:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, first, firstly. Did putting a name to your condition help? And secondly, when you spoke about the buildup of the tar protein in your brain?

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:25Gary O'Reilly?

  How did that? How did the doctors bring that forward for you to explain exactly what the process was? How it goes from you being hit to this development? Because it seems funny that this can take so long to to present.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Well, when it was examined and I left two people out of this that need to be in this. Dr. Paul Nussbaum, my friend in Pittsburgh and the team doctor for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who was my classmate at LSU, Dr. Julian Bales. Okay. And Julian Bales is in the film. He's portrayed by Alec Baldwin in the film Concussions. And the relationship that he had with Cyril Weck, who was portrayed by, um, God, I can't think of his name off the top of my head. Um, but, you know, Cyril Weck and Julian Bales determined that this is what destroyed Mike Webster. Okay.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  It destroyed a number of Pittsburgh Steelers. You got to remember, that was a team that was known for bruising people, putting people in the hospital, leading with the headgear. They were taught and trained and they played the game at a high level like that. That's, they were football and they were the godfathers of football. And if you were going to be a dominant football team, you had to play their style of football in order to be respected. And that's who we were as the New York Giants. That's who we were during the era of my career.

• 27:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm hmm.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  The game was a lot different, Dr. Neal, than it is today. Today, I hear guys tell me it's called, they should call it something else ball. It's too soft of a game now. You know, it's not like, it's not men playing a game for money now. It's little boys playing a game with quarterbacks with skirts on them and such and such.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, interesting. Wow, yeah. Just to be clear, because I like getting the long view on these things.

• 28:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, what would the leatherheads have said about the modern football where you have all of this equipment, you know, what before football even had leather helmets, right? You go back 120 years, whatever, whenever that was. So the arc of the game has been to protect your life, right? So, so.

• 28:41Chuck Nice?

  However, I'm going to push back on that just a little bit.

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:45Chuck Nice?

  The number of injuries in the leatherhead era of football was actually less because the pads and the helmets actually became a weapon. So it gave players the ability to run faster, hit harder and make higher impacts, but also because of the equipment they were wearing to all, to also do more damage.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but, but also they, they weighed 170 pounds, you know?

• 29:13Chuck Nice?

  Well, that too. You had a bunch of tough nicers running around the field.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, right. Okay, Gary, keep going because I know you've got more.

• 29:24Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, so how many, how many players currently with us, NFL players have been diagnosed with CTE? And I'll go back to two moments in history, 2011, David Doerrson, 2012, Junior South, both tragically took their own lives.

• 29:43Chuck Nice?

  Both friends.

• 29:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Did, I'm, I'm sorry.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, man.

• 29:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Did that resonate for you and were those two points in time something that brought the football community to a better understanding or did it just say, oh, well, that's sad and move on?

• 29:59Speaker 03

  I'll, I'll tell you why, well, what I think, okay? David and I were, David Doerrson and I were really close because he was a former Bear player. He joined my team in 1990. We won the Super Bowl with him as a, as a backup safety player. And he played a pivotal role in, in the progression of our team, the whole entire season. His wife was from Baton Rouge. I knew his family because of that. He plays the Omega Sci-Fi, my fraternity. I wrote an intake letter for him. I became a real brother to him and I introduced him into the fraternity through Chicago and a bunch of friends in Chicago. Um. David had a great business, he had a great mind, he was on the board in order day.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  He was a number two supplier of breakfast meat to McDonald's and Burger King worldwide.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  He had a real strong head for business and, you know, just a really good guy. The same applied for Junior Sale. And what was striking for me was when we introduced the movie Concussions out in LA to the world, I got a chance to sit with Junior Sale's family and his daughter at the premiere of the film and just listen to his daughter talk about her dad and talk about what it meant growing up with him in the household and everything else. And it was just sad how she talked that, you know, I will never have those moments in time again with him.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  I will never understand who my father really was outside of football. It would always reflect on me that his life was football. He played in the league, what, seventeen, eighteen years? It was, it really hit me, hit home for me, man. That's why I say what I say, you know. I have a daughter and someday she's going to reflect upon what my body of work was. And I just wanted to have the fondest memories of that. You know, my father stood for something, he was a principal kind of dude and he didn't let his brothers down.

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I keep thinking, I keep thinking, why is any of this even a lawsuit? It should just be, yeah, okay, this is, you know, NFL is not short of money and of course this affliction is many people, but it's not everyone in the NFL, right? It's probably not happening to the place kickers, right? So, so it's so, so it would be a sad indictment of the NFL if the only resolution to come of this is only after they are sued. I mean, that just looks bad. It means they it means they're reluctant, resistant. I'll do it if court makes us do it, but otherwise, no. I mean, what what are we? What what industry are we all supporting out here?

• 33:01Speaker 03

  Look at this way, Dr. Tyson. We 70% of the National Football League is black. The players are African American. Okay, we sued. Okay. Uh, there was a an award of a settlement. 90% of the players that retire from the NFL are going to end up with CTE. That's a fact. That came from Dr. Ann McKee at the University at Boston University. Uh, and also Dr. Robert Kan. So these are things that we know. There are now there's racial norming in this case where the neuropsychs have taken race and use race against the 70% black players to say, well, you did you had a learning disability to begin with.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  So you're probably dumb now because you had that issue when you were a kid. And and and it's just an articulation of you growing your life, but yet you're not getting any smarter.

• 33:57Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, and what for what people don't realize what Leonard's talking about is if we go back to the aptitude test that he talked about that he had to take. So what happens is all the players have to take these neuropsych aptitude tests where they have to answer a certain amount of questions to see how proficient they are mentally. And so the NFL was saying, basically, you guys are at a lower rate coming in because you're not that smart coming in. So you didn't lose any real brain function because your brain function was already low. And as a result, these players are now not uh, the funds to protect these players

• 34:42Chuck Nice?

  after they played are no longer available to these these players that do not do as well on the test.

• 34:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 34:48Chuck Nice?

  So that's the wonderlic test, isn't it?

• 34:50Speaker 03

  No, the wonderlic is what you use when you come into the game. But in the 16 PF used to be in the performance. Those three applications used to be used when you were coming into the league. Those declared whether you were going to be a first, second, or third round draft pick or if you're going to be selected at all because you can't read that playbook and learn it. It's one thing to read it. It's nothing to comprehend it. So. You have players that are like that. I mean, and you know, I've I've seen some guys, the talent outweighs their smarts on the field. And that's the kind of player you just kind of let him go and do what he's got to do.

• 35:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  But got the other situation that's going on with the racial norming that, you know, that they're saying that, well, you weren't that smart to begin with. You badly had a C average in college. And now we're giving you this test. You're testing at a D grade level. So we don't think that you were injured or or anything happened to your brain. We just take your down.

• 35:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 35:45Speaker 03

  That's not too cool.

• 35:47Gary O'Reilly?

  That's.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  That's not too cool.

• 35:48Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, Leonard, you mentioned two doctors, Dr. McKee, Dr. Ann McKee and Dr. Robert Cantu. Now, they're part of the Concussion Legacy Foundation.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  That's correct.

• 35:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Right. So someone out there is fighting the good fight.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  No doubt.

• 36:02Gary O'Reilly?

  How far are they getting with this? Are they progressing at all? Is there some kind of way that they are making progress?

• 36:12Speaker 03

  Well, I'm on the board of CLF. And CLF is doing everything they can. Chris Lewinsky does a fantastic job fighting for players and their families and and their kids' kids. Um, so I can't I can't say enough good things about CLF. Dr. McKee and Dr. Cantu have always been um the brain trust behind uh what's going on with the science of the brain and how it affects former players in both the NHL, the NFL, and some that have been injured in the NBA and Major League Baseball. So, you know, the work that they do is is is consequential to um

• 36:54Speaker 03

  a high level of transparency to players and their family. And and we respect and appreciate that. I think that some people don't.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Like Dr. Tyson was talking about, they don't respect the science and the science doesn't lie. The science is the science. Bottom line, the science is the science.

• 37:18Gary O'Reilly?

  You're in the right place for that, Leonard. You are definitely in the right place.

• 37:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we gotta, we gotta bring this segment to a close. Just before we do, are you, you've been very active just as a, as a proponent and as a supporter of all these causes related to just people's health after, you know, just is the title of your book all over again, When the Cheering Stops. Are you up for an award coming up?

• 37:43Speaker 03

  I'm up for an award. That's funny you bring it up, Dr. Tyson. I'm up for an award from caring kind. The, the dinner is at the Pierre Hotel in New York, St. Pierre Hotel in New York. It happens on June the 6th, 2022. And it's the ALS Society that's honoring me for my work in this space.

• 38:04Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  In fact, I've been a real proponent and advocate.

• 38:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Good. Congratulations.

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'll tell you this, if we gave awards, we give you an award right now.

• 38:11Chuck Nice?

  That's right. But it, but it wouldn't be at the Pierre Hotel. That, that place is expensive. Fifth Avenue, baby.

• 38:19Gary O'Reilly?

  You bring your car.

• 38:20Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's Fifth Avenue East, baby.

• 38:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is, it is. He's right. Well, listen, Leonard, it's been a delight to have you, a kind of sad delight. I mean, I'm glad somebody's paying attention to this and that it's, and it sounds like all, all forces are aligned to resolve this in some way, to redress the problems that have happened before and to prevent them from ever happening again. And we gotta shed a little bit of that testosterone macho on the field. It's still an entertaining game, you know? It's still drawing the crowds and, you know, to be tackled doesn't mean you have to not get up after it. Okay? I'm just saying.

• 39:07Gary O'Reilly?

  You can't take contact out of the sport because if you do, this is no longer NFL.

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I get it. There are ways to make contact where you're not a bullet passing through somebody's.

• 39:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Totally, totally.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 03

  The only way to take it out is to take the head out and you can't take the head out of football.

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be weird if you just had bodies running up and down, headless bodies.

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And do it. All right, Leonard, it's been a delight. Thank you for being on StarTalk. Thank you. We're gonna pivot now to Heather Berlin in our third segment. And we'll tell her you said hi, Leonard, and we're delighted that she brought you to us. Godspeed, stay healthy, and give us a holler again if you've got more to tell about this story. When we come back, our third segment will be with our neuroscientist at large, Heather Berlin, who'll sort of figure out what's going on here and why and where it's gonna head in the future of the sport. This is StarTalk. See you in a moment.

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about concussions and many concussions, actually. The kind that accumulate and turn into something really bad later in life. Something that, of course, football players suffer from. Many didn't even know that this was going on. And in particular, we went through two segments with our special guest Leonard Marshall, former football player with the New York Giants, two-time Super Bowler. And Chuck, was he an offensive tackle? Is that what his title, what his position?

• 40:56Chuck Nice?

  No, he was the defensive.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Defensive tackle, protecting the... So...

• 40:59Chuck Nice?

  He's coming after guys.

• 41:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's coming after the other team's quarterback?

• 41:05Chuck Nice?

  He's a hitman. That's what he is.

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 41:09Chuck Nice?

  He was more than very good at it. Him and Lawrence Taylor together, they were... I hate them so much. They were so awful.

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So against your team, yes?

• 41:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. They made it so hard for me.

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For you and your Eagles. So they plucked the Eagles bald. Ooh, that was a good one.

• 41:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they did.

• 41:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we don't have particular expertise in the neurology of this, but of course, we have a friend of StarTalk, our go-to person, our neuroscientist at large, Heather Berlin. Heather, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 41:44Heather Berlin?

  Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

• 41:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so he mentioned that he had a battery of tests that in recent years enabled medical professionals to diagnose this accumulation of small bits of brain damage known as CTE. And I always forget what that stands for.

• 42:01Heather Berlin?

  It's chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

• 42:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hence, the abbreviation.

• 42:07Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  CTE. And so, so apparently. My head hurts just saying that. Yeah, I know, right? Right? So what we had learned was in the day, you would never know this until the patient was dead. And then you do your normal brain slicing on the autopsy. But apparently, there's some progress where you can do this in the living patient. But how definitive can that be relative to just say, look, dude, give me your brain, I'll slice it open and then I'll let you know?

• 42:37Heather Berlin?

  Right. I mean, still, the gold standard, if you want to know with 100%, you know, definitive is to look postpartum. It's the same thing with Alzheimer's as well. You really have to see these particular pattern of these plaques, these tau proteins, and these tangles. But if you kind of piece together a bunch of different tests, some MRI, and there's particular patterns looking at PET and tau buildup in particular parts of the brain, along with these clinical tests, like neurocognitive testing, you can start to get a full picture where you can give a pretty accurate diagnosis of CTE, but it's still not 100%.

• 43:19Heather Berlin?

  So you actually see the neuropathology in the brain itself.

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know Chuck, I know Chuck and Gary are busting with questions. Gary, what do you have for her right now?

• 43:30Gary O'Reilly?

  The tau protein, it just changes and develops in a certain way, doctor. So how is it changing? Why is it changing from an impact? But it doesn't change. Normally, if you have impact on the body, a bruise appears.

• 43:45Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 43:46Gary O'Reilly?

  But this protein change.

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the bruise heals, right?

• 43:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. And then the change happens maybe decades later. So what is the process that's going on in there?

• 43:59Heather Berlin?

  So, okay, part of it is, right when you get the impact, you have this kind of neurochemical cascade that occurs. You have the release of certain, you have basically what's called neural depolarization, which releases these excitatory neurotransmitters. And it kind of shifts the balance in the brain. It changes the glucose metabolism and the blood flow. And then that in turn can impair the axonal function. So basically, a lot of these tau proteins are in the white matter. They're in the sort of microtubules of the brain. And when you have this complex neurochemical cascade that occurs when there's been a traumatic injury,

• 44:42Heather Berlin?

  it sets off this process, which has a distinct, you know, in the course of a couple of days, you can see it, a distinct sort of process. But then, it can take years for this sort of full damage, for the death of the neurons to occur. Because there's sort of a buildup. If you think of it like, you know, in the arteries, when you're having a kind of buildup of plaque over time. But it does, it takes a while to actually have like a heart attack, right? So if you think of, in the most simplest terms, like a buildup of sort of gunk that was set off by this initial neurochemical process. And over time, it can lead to neuronal death. And I think that's the easiest way to explain it without getting too technical.

• 45:23Chuck Nice?

  And the neuronal death, that when you're talking about the death of these neurons. So basically, that's the transmission of, you know, information in the brain. That's how the brain talks to the brain.

• 45:36Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 45:36Chuck Nice?

  Right?

• 45:37Heather Berlin?

  So when you have-

• 45:38Chuck Nice?

  So what you're having is, go ahead.

• 45:39Heather Berlin?

  Well, I mean, it's mostly, you know, these, it's the white matter. So, so think about this. You have the, the brain, this very soft piece of matter inside a very rough, bony skull that has all these little ridges. And when you get this acceleration, deceleration event, the brain kind of shakes within this-

• 45:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the polite way to say you got hit in the head.

• 45:58Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go on.

• 45:59Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. You get banged in the head.

• 46:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get banged, the acceleration, deceleration, get banged in the head.

• 46:06Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. And sometimes they technically, we call it a coup, counter coup event, but this rocking sort of back and forth. Now, there's different density between the gray matter and the white matter in the brain. So they kind of stretch and they move at different rates. So that causes a stretching or tearing or shearing in the white matter. Um, when you have the kind of shaking of the, of the brain within the skull. This tearing causes this neurochemical cascade that I, that I spoke about. But that's how they communicate the white matter where this shearing effect occurs, this tearing, this pulling, it affects the communication between different brain areas. Um, and ultimately, so that's one aspect that can cause some of the symptoms. Um, and the other is that you have a, eventually this, um, this neuro

• 46:50Heather Berlin?

  degeneration where you get, start to have brain death, which is akin to kind of what happens in an Alzheimer's process or, or other neurodegenerative disorders.

• 47:00Gary O'Reilly?

  On a personal level, Heather, I headed a football or a soccer ball, if you prefer, for many years and quite some time ago. And I would have last played a competitive game in the mid nineties.

• 47:16Chuck Nice?

  So the question is, how long will it be before Gary can no longer have this conversation?

• 47:21Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go.

• 47:24Heather Berlin?

  So, you know, it, it kind of, it, it, there's a couple of things. It could set off a process if you already have a kind of vulnerability toward a neurodegenerative disorder. It could make you more vulnerable. So there's something we call cognitive reserve, which is basically kind of what is your baseline? If you have a lot of different connections in the brain, you know, um, that you can afford to lose a little bit of cognitive function or a little bit of structural stability or integrity and still kind of be okay and get by, right? So, so.

• 47:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, we have no idea how smart Gary was before the show.

• 48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We only know him in his current state. Yeah.

• 48:06Gary O'Reilly?

  You see?

• 48:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We only know him in his current state. But Gary, you said it's not only did you use your head during the game, you practiced.

• 48:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 48:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hitting stuff.

• 48:14Gary O'Reilly?

  And you have to, you will learn a technique to head a football in the most efficient way. So. Which is how?

• 48:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your forehead?

• 48:22Gary O'Reilly?

  You meet it on the forehead, yeah.

• 48:23Heather Berlin?

  Worst, worst.

• 48:25Gary O'Reilly?

  And you develop mus, you develop muscul, muscular density here to strengthen. So as you're able, so as you don't get the whiplash if the ball hits you in the head when you connect with it. So you develop things like you would with muscles for running.

• 48:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see. So you protected your, your neck vertebrae, but your brain is mush. Right? That's what you're saying.

• 48:44Heather Berlin?

  Well, I, I feel like, listen, it's not a good thing to be bunting balls in your head. But the, the thing is not everybody develops CTE, right? It's a percentage.

• 48:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Keep cheering me up, doctor.

• 48:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, good. Okay.

• 48:58Heather Berlin?

  So maybe, you know, maybe 30% I think is some of the statistic of the people who are, let's say, playing in sports that are bunting, bunting their head or taking a lot of hits. And so, you know, I think we still don't fully understand why certain people develop it and others don't. Certain people have multiple concussions over time. It could, it could have to do with certain vulnerabilities. It could have to do with the age at which you started having these small head injuries. And, and it's kind of like COVID right now, you know, some people get it and it's devastating and horrible. And others are, you know, asymptomatic and perfectly fine. And I think that there is an underlying mechanism. It could be related to genetics. We don't know yet. But so there's some hope for you.

• 49:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Gary, were you wearing a mask while you were heading the ball? That's the most important thing. Yeah, you're socially distanced.

• 49:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather, I've read that. Heather, I've read that there are no pain neurons in the brain. Is that right? So, so you would have no idea that you were undergoing this slow damage. Whereas a tiny little pinprick anywhere on your skin, you would know. I mean, even in the most obscure places.

• 50:09Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. I mean, do you think?

• 50:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Especially in the most obscure places.

• 50:17Heather Berlin?

  That is one of the most fascinating things about the brain is so I'm fortunate enough to be involved in some neurosurgery when we're doing brain mapping. So for example, we want to map out a person's getting a lesion removed and we want to make sure we don't take out their language areas. So we, while they're in surgery, we can wake them up, we can be inside

• 50:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's nice of you. That's nice of you to just not

• 50:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 50:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take out. You sound like a military operation, let's take out their language.

• 50:42Chuck Nice?

  Right. It's just like, so how you feeling?

• 50:47Heather Berlin?

  They're fine. They're fine.

• 50:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they're fine.

• 50:50Chuck Nice?

  It's like Young Frank, Young Frankenstein.

• 50:53Heather Berlin?

  But no, so we piece by piece, we use electrical stimulation, stimulate each piece and have a person talk. And eventually we hit an area where they literally just can't talk anymore and we know not to take out that area. But the point is that we're not to remove the area in a very delicate way. But um

• 51:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God. So you're telling me that something as sophisticated as neurosurgery?

• 51:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Y'all just poking around?

• 51:20Chuck Nice?

  It's really, right.

• 51:21Heather Berlin?

  Literally.

• 51:22Chuck Nice?

  So you're telling me electricians?

• 51:24Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 51:24Chuck Nice?

  Electricians are better? At finding the electrical connection? That you, like, no electrician would start poking your walls to figure out where the wires are.

• 51:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have ways.

• 51:38Heather Berlin?

  Pretty much where we're at. But the amazing thing is that the person is awake, their skull is open, we're literally, you know, inside their brain and they don't feel any of it, right? The thing that creates all of our pain sensations doesn't feel anything itself when it's being touched or stimulated or cut into.

• 51:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's deep.

• 51:55Heather Berlin?

  Right? And it can bleed and be cut into, but you don't, you don't feel it, but it, but it's the seat of pain itself. So the thing about it with CTE and another, you know, symptoms from traumatic brain injury is that it's, it's a silent Um, people are suffering with it in sense because you can't see it, right? You can see, see it. So you can see it a little bit with these hyper intensities we call it on MRI. The little white spots that show up over time. But really, it's subjective. The person is saying, I have a brain fog. I can't concentrate. I can't read. Or they start acting impulsively. Um, but, but you don't feel pain itself, other than headaches is often, often people complain of having headache.

• 52:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm.

• 52:32Heather Berlin?

  But that's really the meninges, like a headache is not the brain itself hurting. It's actually like a migraine is the, the surrounding membrane that does have pain sensors in it. And that's where you actually feel the headache.

• 52:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Heather.

• 52:45Chuck Nice?

  Like, like when you get a hangover, that's my migraine.

• 52:48Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Heather, Heather, does, does the brain not have a capacity for regeneration in certain places or in, in all of it?

• 52:56Heather Berlin?

  It does. I mean, it's, it's amazingly, I mean, it's, it's, it's very susceptible to damage, but it is amazingly able to kind of heal in, to an extent. So a lot of it is compensatory, right? You can, if, as long as certain structures are in place, if you have damage, you can maybe build alternative routes, alternative.

• 53:14Chuck Nice?

  Rewire.

• 53:15Heather Berlin?

  Rewire.

• 53:15Chuck Nice?

  Your brain rewires.

• 53:16Heather Berlin?

  Rewire.

• 53:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 53:17Heather Berlin?

  But when you start to have these neurodegenerative processes, so much of the brain is affected across the board. It starts to atrophy. You're losing gray matter. So like I said, first you get these white matter tears, but eventually that leads to death of the cell body, the gray matter. And, and then you don't have the actual structure to support the, the brain function, the cognitive function anymore. So you can compensate to an extent. So if you have one area of a brain lesion that doesn't spread, right? It's not a neurodegenerative disorder. You can create these alternative pathways to sort of circumvent that, that damaged area. But when you start having globally damage, there's only so much the brain can do to compensate.

• 53:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, I just wanna, just to, just to establish a baseline here. Of all sciences, yours is the most constricted by what kind of experiments you can do. Right? I mean, a chemist can just remix the Petri dish, or the biologist, and do it at a different temperature, under different acidity, a different lighting condition, whatever. You can't just walk up to people in the street, "Can I play with your brain?" You're like, you can't do that. So, so how far behind are you? Or, let me, rather than, rather than boast how far we've come, how much more remains to be discovered?

• 54:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, give me, give me an honest appraisal of your field right now.

• 54:47Heather Berlin?

  Okay, so, I mean, look, there, there's a lot of work we can do. I don't do this research, but there are people in the field who are doing animal research, right? And there you can do much more controlled experiments in animals that you can't do in humans. Part of what I have always done is I try to create experiments that would be in humans that are analogous to what we're able to do in animals, but we have to kind of wait for the right subjects to emerge. So, let me give you an example. Like, one is, for example, part of my PhD work was I looked at what, what is the, part of the brain, the orbital prefrontal cortex, what does it do? And so, in animal models, in mice and monkeys, you can lesion that part of the brain specifically and then do experiments.

• 55:32Heather Berlin?

  You can't go in and lesion a human. So, what I had to do is sort through, this was in London, at, at King's College London, the neurosurgery department, sort through patient files of patients who have come in, who are still alive, who have had the particular type of brain surgery because it was removal of a tumor, or because they had damage to that part of the brain because of a stroke or an aneurysm, where I would find those specific patients that happened to have damage to that part of the brain, and then bring them in for a study. But that takes longer. So, the thing is, we can do these studies, but the, the length of time it takes to gather the patients who have naturally gotten damage to these parts of the brain, let's say, can, can increase the length of time it takes us to make these discoveries. So, if I was to give you a number, I mean, like, it's very hard to say.

• 56:16Heather Berlin?

  How much longer, you know, it's taking us because we don't have control in human studies, but we are developing techniques where we can do non-invasive stimulation to brain parts, which in effect knock them out temporarily. And that's helping us make some advances. So we're getting more creative with the kinds of experiments we do in humans.

• 56:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, we gotta, we gotta bring this to a close. But before we do, could you tell us how you came to know about Leonard Marshall's case? Because you brought him to us for us to create this show.

• 56:43Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, I was, I was, I do a lot of work with Alzheimer's patients and people with neurodegenerative disorders and as well with CTE. And I was connected with him basically to talk to him about his cognitive functioning problems that he's having and see if there's any treatments and also to help, you know, spread the word about this because it's, it's a major problem that I think needs to, that, that in, in some ways, you know, is not getting the kind of coverage that I think it needs. There's a lot of people suffering with this and, and they're doing it behind the scenes. So I, he was.

• 57:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think we learned offline, what was it? Was it offline Chuck? Where we were talking about helmet brain or something or head brain? What's that with, with sled, sled head, sled head?

• 57:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 57:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bob sledders where they're, you know, you see the camera.

• 57:39Chuck Nice?

  They're just constantly.

• 57:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's vibration.

• 57:41Chuck Nice?

  Bobbling about.

• 57:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Constantly vibrating on, on the ice. So this sounds like a broader issue with regard to sports where your head gets dinged, right? I mean, this is, obviously it's not just football.

• 57:53Heather Berlin?

  I think, you know, a hundred years from now, we're going to look back on the way we've played sports and how little we, you know, how much we disregarded the damage that was happening to the brain. And we're going to think, you know, just the way we look back to the 19, I don't know, 50s and everybody was smoking, including doctors and, you know, saying it was good for you. Like, I think we're going to look back on this and look at it with similar disdain. There's a lot of money involved in sports and a lot of people say, well, they get paid millions of dollars. So I guess they're sacrificing their, you know, brain as a consequence.

• 58:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 58:25Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, anyway, I think that I think that people should know.

• 58:27Chuck Nice?

  By that time, all sports will be played by robots. And all the kids playing video games now will be the real athletes who are controlling those robots. And, you know, and then there will be a big movement of people who are like saying, well, you know, we have to care about the robots and their brains, you know, because their central processing units are getting damaged in this sport. And why should they give their lives?

• 58:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is Chuck's sci-fi apocalyptic thriller.

• 58:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man.

• 58:56Heather Berlin?

  But I do think, I do think that the way that, you know, we care very much about athletes' physical bodies and they have trainers and they take care of them and they get massages and whatever, we should think about also taking care of the brain as well and brain health in the process.

• 59:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a place we haven't arrived at yet, but it is completely where we should be headed.

• 59:15Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 59:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Neil, in the future, we probably will have way less more contact in our sports. And the sort of extreme sports that, and you might then push what we consider mainline sports like sledding and push them into the extreme category and then reduce that because of the damage that's potentially taking place.

• 59:34Heather Berlin?

  Or maybe just take heading out of soccer as well, right? There's no-

• 59:38Gary O'Reilly?

  That's on its way. That, I can tell you, maybe in 30 years' time, there will not be heading of a football.

• 59:44Chuck Nice?

  And maybe in 30 years' time, in soccer, they'll just use their hands. Because what the hell, man? That's what you got them for!

• 59:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just dangling there, doing nothing.

• 59:56Chuck Nice?

  I mean, what? Two perfectly good utensils with opposable thumbs. And you're like, no, we can't use those. What would we ever use those for?

• 1:00:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Chuck just blew a gasket, which means it's time to close this out. Gary, Chuck, good to have you. And Heather, it is a delight always to have you enlighten us in all of your neurological ways. All right. This has been StarTalk Sports Edition. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.