PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Food and Drug Administration has just approved a new device to keep athletes safer from impacts to the head.
The Q-Collar looks like a large C or a thick plastic hair band that you wear around your neck, putting pressure on the jugular vein to increase the blood volume in the brain.
Dr. Dianne Langford, assistant dean of research, professor of neuroscience and professor in the Center for Neurovirology and the Center for Substance Abuse Research at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine, said if you think of the skull as a Tupperware container and your brain a water balloon, it's easy to understand why this works.
"Let's take a balloon and fill it halfway with water, and put that in the Tupperware container and shake it. So you can imagine the water in the balloon sloshes around a lot," she said.
"Now let's take that balloon and fill it all the way up with water and put it back in the container and shake it. In that situation you have a fuller balloon with less sloshability if you will."
The Q-Collar is worn with helmets and other protective gear and can be used for four hours at a time.