英语听力文摘 English Digest 407、头球有害健康吗？（在线收听）

Is Heading in Soccer Dangerous?
头球危险吗？

        Is heading in soccer dangerous? It’s a question that has met its fair share of controversy.

If you’ve never played soccer, heading may look pretty dangerous to the poor brain. Where else in life do you not want to duck away from an object flying straight at your head? However, soccer players know that there is a proper way to head the ball.

Yes, there is a technique to meeting a flying ball with your head. Dr. Frank Webbe, is a former soccer referee and coach who is also a psychologist specializing in sports psychology. He says there is good reason to believe that with proper technique, a player’s risk for brain injury is low.

The problem is that in a fast-paced game of soccer, obstacles sometimes prevent a player from heading with good technique. And that’s when problems are likely to arise.

Webbe and collaborators tested soccer players in neurocognitive performance such as attention, concentration, and speed of thinking.

They compared long-time soccer players to novices, as well as moderate-to-frequent headers to less than moderate headers. In addition, they tested people who had played soccer recently as well as people who hadn’t played in some time.

The results suggested that more frequent headers are at more risk for brain injury than less frequent headers. As a group, frequent headers performed lower on cognition tests in the week after a game of frequent heading than did other subjects.

Also, players with the highest lifetime estimates of heading scored lowest overall on these cognition tests. The results convince Webbe that heading does indeed pose a threat to brain function and that more research needs to be done.

头球危险吗？这个问题引发了不少争议。

如果你从未踢过足球，头球看起来对可怜的大脑的确杀伤力很大。如果，生活中的其它时候你看到飞来横物，你难道没有躲闪以求护头？然而，足球运动员是知道头球路数的。

当然，头球是需要技巧的。前有名足球裁判兼教练Frank Webbe在足球心理学上也有研究。他说有理由相信有技巧的头球可以降低大脑受伤的几率。

可问题在于在踢球这个快节奏的运动中，球员头球的技巧可能会受限制。这也是问题的关键。

Webbe和同事测试了足球运动员的神经认知，比如注意力、集中力、思维反应。

他们比较了新老足球运动员,较常头球的球员和较少头球的球员，最近常常踢球的人和在一段时间内没有踢球的人。

结果显示常常头球的人比较少头球的人损伤大脑的风险更高。前者总的来说，在长期头球后的一周内做的认知测试中普遍比后者表现得更差。

此外，球员估计在此生中头球最多的在认知测试中表现最差。测试结果足以说服Webbe头球确实有损大脑功能，需要更多研究加以验证。

 duck away from:躲开