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Retired American football players are experiencing intense abnormalities in their brain activity, a new study has discovered.

The unusual activities were revealed through brain imaging tests that correlates with the number of times they had left the field with a head injury during their entire career. Though the retired players are still to be diagnosed with any neurological condition.

According to previous research it was found that former American football players had increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

The new findings published in Scientific Reports, suggest that the players are also vulnerable to subtle neurological deficits that normally show up on the normal clinical tests.

13 former National Football League (NFL) professionals were taken into consideration. They believed that they were suffering from neurological problems.

The test involved rearranging coloured balls in a series of tubes in as few steps as possible and the participants were those 13 formal NFL professionals and 60 healthy volunteers.

“The NFL alumni showed some of the most pronounced abnormalities in brain activity that I have ever seen, and I have processed a lot of patient data sets in the past,” said Dr Adam Hampshire, lead author of the study, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London in a press release.

The NFL alumni performed worse than the healthy volunteers that took part in the test, with difference being subtle.

“The critical fact is that the level of brain abnormality correlates strongly with the measure of head impacts of great enough severity to warrant being taken out of play. This means that it is highly likely that damage caused by blows to the head accumulate towards an executive impairment in later life,” added Dr Adam.

The study is rather preliminary and more tests on players are needed before reaching any firm conclusion.