Brain Injury

The Boston restaurant community is an uncommonly generous one. And when a friend is in need, everyone bands together to help out. This time, the guy in need is Vinny Sapochetti of Neptune Oyster (above). At the end of April, a car accident left him with a brain injury. His recovery is going to take some time. Colleagues, friends, and family are banding together to raise money to help pay his bills while he is out of work. To that end, a fund-raiser and auction take place Monday, May 28, at the Hotel Commonwealth from 5-10 p.m. (Find all the details here .)

Journalist Bob Woodruff urged Boston College's 136th graduating class Monday to give back, practice faith, pursue their passions, and never forget the importance of friends and family - lessons he said he learned six years ago on the day he "should have died. " While Woodruff was reporting in Iraq for ABC News on Jan. 29, 2006, he sustained a traumatic brain injury when the military vehicle in which he was traveling struck a roadside bomb. Initially, he was not expected to survive, he said.

Traumatic brain injury, described as the signature wound of the Iraq war, may be less to blame for soldiers' symptoms than doctors once thought, contends a provocative military study that suggests post-traumatic stress and depression often play a role. That would be good news because there are successful treatments for those conditions, said several nonmilitary doctors who praised the research. Thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq have struggled with memory loss, irritability, trouble sleeping, and other problems.

When Nahant's Tara Butler crosses home plate at Fenway Park on Sunday, her hometown can take credit for doing a good thing for area veterans. Butler plans to be one of 2,000 participants in today's Run-Walk to Home Base, a fund-raising run/walk to benefit the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Program. Funds raised will provide clinical care and support services for returning veterans with combat stress or traumatic brain injury and their families.

Despite living with a brain injury that has left Mira Bartok with memory loss, the New Salem author has won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for her memoir, "The Memory Palace: A Memoir. " Bartok said she was completely surprised, very honored and thought for a second that a mistake had been made when she learned she had been nominated for the national award. She said when the NBCC announced her the winner in the autobiography category at an awards ceremony in New York City, she felt surprise all over again.

MILWAUKEE -- An unusual study by doctors treating blast victims at a field hospital in Iraq has found that ruptured eardrums may help reveal which troops are at risk of hidden brain injury. The finding is important because many such brain injuries have been missed in the past, especially when more severe or obvious wounds demanded attention. Researchers reported their observation in a letter in yesterday's New England Journal of Medicine. Diagnosing brain injury, especially mild damage, is based largely on subjective symptoms like irritability...

The soldier on the fringes of an explosion. The survivor of a car wreck. The football player who took yet another skull-rattling hit. Too often, only time can tell when a traumatic brain injury will leave lasting harm — there's no good way to diagnose the damage. Now scientists are testing a tool that lights up the breaks these injuries leave deep in the brain's wiring, much like X-rays show broken bones. Research is just beginning in civilian and military patients to learn if this new kind of MRI-based test really could pinpoint their injuries...

How is Gabrielle Giffords doing - truly? Since Jan. 8, when the Arizona congresswoman was shot in the head - the bullet struck the left side of her brain, the side that corrals language, balance, a sense of space and time - she has progressed incredibly. She can walk. She can talk. Her doctors have put her in the top 5 percent for recovery, and to see her standing on the House floor in August, waterfalls of applause all around, was to see a miracle. But it's a miracle with catches.

Authorities say a 16-year-old high school football player who died after collapsing during a game suffered bleeding on his brain, apparently from a helmet-to-helmet collision. Cortland County Coroner Kevin Sharp says Ridge Barden died from a massive subdural hematoma, a traumatic brain injury. The lineman for John C. Birdlebough High School in the Oswego County village of Phoenix was hurt during Friday night's game at Homer High School, south of Syracuse. Authorities say he was able to sit up after the play but complained of a headache and collapsed when...

A small study raises more concern about the long-term consequences of brain injuries suffered by thousands of soldiers — suggesting they may be at risk of developing the same degenerative brain disease as some retired football players. Autopsies of four young veterans found the earliest signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in their brain tissue, Boston researchers reported Wednesday. They compared the brain tissue of some of the youngest athletes ever found with signs of early CTE, in their teens and 20s, and concluded the abnormalities were...

The Boston restaurant community is an uncommonly generous one. And when a friend is in need, everyone bands together to help out. This time, the guy in need is Vinny Sapochetti of Neptune Oyster (above). At the end of April, a car accident left him with a brain injury. His recovery is going to take some time. Colleagues, friends, and family are banding together to raise money to help pay his bills while he is out of work. To that end, a fund-raiser and auction take place Monday, May 28, at the Hotel Commonwealth from 5-10 p.m. (Find all the details here .)

A small study raises more concern about the long-term consequences of brain injuries suffered by thousands of soldiers — suggesting they may be at risk of developing the same degenerative brain disease as some retired football players. Autopsies of four young veterans found the earliest signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in their brain tissue, Boston researchers reported Wednesday. They compared the brain tissue of some of the youngest athletes ever found with signs of early CTE, in their teens and 20s, and concluded the abnormalities...

A former Navy man is being detained under a suicide watch after being charged with torturing his wife in their home for nearly five hours. The Day of New London reports ( http://bit.ly/K4RZA0) that 36-year-old James Tapp of Groton was charged Monday with kidnapping, cruelty to persons, assault and other crimes. The woman told police the ordeal began at about 11:30 p.m. Sunday and ended at about 5 a.m. Monday. She alleges Tapp beat her, squeezed her finger with pliers, threatened to shoot her and threatened to slice her from ear to ear with a knife.

The attorney for a former Marine who pleaded guilty on Thursday to killing a man while driving drunk in Tampa blamed his client's post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury received while fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Scott Sciple, 38, pleaded guilty to DUI manslaughter and DUI with personal injury. In 2010, Sciple plowed head-on into another car and killed the other driver, a 48-year-old father named Pedro Rivera. Sciple's family and lawyer blamed the crash on his combat injuries and noted that his case spurred the military to acknowledge it should be more thorough in...

A convicted sex offender who faces nearly two dozen charges in Utah but has remained free because of a legal loophole likely will never face trial or be confined to an institution, a prosecutor said Tuesday. "He falls into this gray area," Utah County prosecutor Craig Johnson said. "For criminal prosecution, we are in an indefinite holding pattern. The proceedings are stayed, perhaps forever. " Lonnie Johnson, 39, was charged in 2007 with 21 sodomy and sex assault counts after police said he had inappropriate contact with his stepdaughter and her cousin.

It's no surprise that fewer than 1 in 5 bicyclists wore helmets when they rented from Hubway, the city's new bike-sharing service. The system caters to tourists and spur-of-the-moment travelers. Nonetheless, the statistic is troubling, and the city should tackle the problem with the same creativity it showed in creating Hubway itself, which now encompasses 600 bikes at 61 rental stations. With a little ingenuity, it seems eminently feasible to make helmets as accessible as the bikes themselves.

It's no surprise that fewer than 1 in 5 bicyclists wore helmets when they rented from Hubway, the city's new bike-sharing service. The system caters to tourists and spur-of-the-moment travelers. Nonetheless, the statistic is troubling, and the city should tackle the problem with the same creativity it showed in creating Hubway itself, which now encompasses 600 bikes at 61 rental stations. With a little ingenuity, it seems eminently feasible to make helmets as accessible as the bikes themselves.

Dave Duerson made it easy to understand why he was ending his tortured life. Before the former Chicago Bears star fired a bullet into his chest last year, he left word with his family to have his brain examined for damage he believed was caused by repeated blows to the head from his hell-bent style on the football field. Junior Seau was an even bigger star in the NFL, and yet he ended his life Wednesday in much the same way as Duerson and former Atlanta Falcons safety Ray Easterling: self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Junior Seau, one of the greatest linebackers in NFL history and an emotional leader on four Patriots teams, including the 2007 squad that went 16-0 in the regular season, was found shot to death at his home in Oceanside, Calif., on Wednesday in what police said was an apparent suicide. Seau was 43 years old and less than three years removed from his final NFL game - at Gillette Stadium in the Patriots' playoff loss to the Ravens on Jan. 10, 2010. "This is a sad day for the entire Patriots organization, our coaches and his many Patriots teammates," the Patriots...