Concussion, CTE and Football’s Brain Crisis – with Prof Alan Pearce

Concussion isn’t just “getting your bell rung” — it’s a mild traumatic brain injury that disrupts how your brain’s electrical system works, often long after the obvious symptoms settle.Neurophysiologist Professor Alan Pearce has spent more than a decade using non-invasive brain stimulation to study how the brain recovers — or doesn’t — after repeated impacts in Australian Rules football, rugby and other contact sports.Fresh from appearing on ABC’s Four Corners investigation Collision, which revealed a far higher number of former players diagnosed with CTE than previously known, Alan joins Uncomfortably Curious to dig into what’s really happening in the brain during concussion and chronic traumatic encephalopathy.We talk about the mismatch he’s found between symptom resolution and physiological recovery, why a player can feel fine while their nervous system is still compromised, and what his research shows about 12–14 day return-to-play rules versus the roughly 26-day window the brain often needs to genuinely recover.We also explore how many concussions might be “too many”, why CTE isn’t simply a concussion disease, and the cultural habits that keep athletes saying “just one more” even as the risks mount.Along the way, Alan touches on the current push to develop clinical diagnostic criteria for CTE, and where listeners can go to support the Australian Sports Brain Bank and the Concussion & CTE Foundation’s work.