Did you know that former NFL tight end Aaron Hernandez suffered the most severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy ever discovered in a person his age? The damage found would have significantly affected his decision-making, judgment and cognition, researchers at Boston University revealed at a medical conference Thursday.
Ann McKee, the head of BU’s CTE Center, which has studied the disease caused by repetitive brain trauma for more than a decade, called Hernandez’s brain “one of the most significant contributions to our work” because of the brain’s pristine condition and the rare opportunity to study the disease in a 27-year-old.
Hernandez hanged himself with a bedsheet in April in a Massachusetts prison while serving a life sentence for the murder of Odin Lloyd in 2013.
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