I just finished watching a Grand Rounds presentation on CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) presented by Dr Cantu of Boston University.

There are a few important issues he brought up.

He is concerned that many AD diagnosis, especially Early Onset AD are more likely to be CTE. The symptoms are very similar.

He has an opportunity for subjects to donate their brains to research at the Sports Legacy Foundation. They can easily differentiate between AD and CTE with a specific stain at post-mortem. The tau markers show up different and the amyloid plaques are rare in CTE.

If anybody is interested, this presentation will be on again this evening. It is on the Research Channel at 8:00 pm Mountain time.

One issue he states is that CTE is more related to multiple sub-concussive impact than it is related to higher intensity concussive impacts.

The classic first symptoms to present is behavior/personality changes. Loss of impulse control etc show up before the other cognitive dysfunctions. This sure sounds like what my father went through.

It may be downloaded at http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/...31621&fid=1826

There is a second video worth watching at :

http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/...31620&fID=1845