Aaron Hernandez's Brain Showed Signs of Brain Injury Never Seen Before in Someone Under 40

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The brain of Aaron Hernandez, a former NFL player who was convicted of murder and later hanged himself in prison, showed clear signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) at a stage that researchers had never seen in a person below the age of 46, according to The Washington Post.

As Jan Leestma, a forensic neuropathologist has time and again told Newsweek, it’s very tricky business mapping behavior onto the physical features of the brain. Leestma, who did not evaluate Hernandez’s case, seemed struck by the fact that researchers had observed Stage 3 CTE in the brain of a man who died at 27 years old.

“It’s certainly worrisome that you have CTE in such a young person,” Leestma told Newsweek. “They ought to be able to somehow correlate that to number of hits and concussions and stuff like that. It probably would correlate.”

As for what that could mean behaviorally, Leestma says people with that level of CTE can become impulsive and have “rage attacks.” While Leestma himself has not seen the images of Hernandez’s brain, he speculated that the buildup of tau protein may have led to a disconnection or damage to Hernandez’s frontal lobes, which are associated with impulse control.

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