markneil,

I'm confused. What did I post that sounds like a hypothesis ?

Correction, chgs made the comment about the hypothesis. "A very recent study actually supports your hypothesis at the 60 day mark!"

The study about damage showing up after return to baseline did qEEG analysis of the frontal lobe. There are companies working on active monitoring of frontal lobe waveforms to track injuries on the playing field. This same technology is being used to look at recovery and such.

regarding Lightrail's post, I never said that people can not return to a symptom free condition. What I said is that that symptom free person can experience a return of symptoms from stressors.

So, Yes, many will return to a symptom free condition. But, they should not be surprised if stressful living causes a return of symptoms. Getting drunk will often have more effects after a concussion than before.

Mark,

I meant that hypothesis that there is long term physical damage after a concussion.

Right now, the diagnostic tools are not very effective. But in the future, better imaging and techniques will allow the specific identification of the actual physical root causes. This would hopefully pave the way to treatments that actually fix the cause rather than covering the symptoms by evaluating how the treatment actually affects structural brain features, allowing for better evaluation of controlled trials.

As I stated, A research study in the 70's shows that there is residual damage after the concussion appears to have resolved. This is not a hypothesis.

Unless there is some miraculous discovery with stem cells or other ways to spur neurogenesis beyond what happens naturally, I doubt there will be any clinical trails of treatment protocols. There are too many variables to organize a cohort of subjects with similar injuries.

Either way, the costs for such treatments will be a major cause for denial by insurance companies.

There are current diagnostic tools that are accurate. They are just not accepted by the medical establishment in many cases. They do not change the treatment options in most cases.

They already can test different protocols with live in vitro brain tissues. I've seen these tests. They are very interesting but I have not seen anything promising. They can watch the axons and dendrites make connections under different conditions. It did not appear they could influence these processes.

Since research is funded by either a drug company or the government, there must be a large population to serve to justify the costs.