Table 1.

Clinicopathological characteristics of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in patients exposed to repetitive, mild traumatic brain injury (rTBI) or surviving 1 year or more after a single, moderate or severe TBI (sTBI)

Characteristics	rTBI	sTBI
Clinical history
Personality change	+	+
Impulsivity or disinhibition	+	+
Depression, suicidality	+	+
Cognitive impairment	+	+
Gait disturbance	+	+
Parkinsonism	+	?
Macroscopic appearances
Cerebral atrophy	+	(+)
Cerebellar atrophy	+	?
Ventricular enlargement	+	+
Thinning of the corpus callosum	+	+
Abnormalities of the septum pellucidum, including cavum septum	+	−
Evidence of previous TBI	+/−	+/−
Microscopic appearances
Tau
Perivascular accentuation	+	+
Neurofibrillary tangles	+	+
Glial profiles	+	+
Grain-like profiles	+	+
Sulcal depths	+	+
Superficial neocortical layers	+	+
Patchy distribution	+	?
Hippocampal CA2 involvement	+	?
Hypothalamic region	+	?
Brainstem	+	?
Axonal	(+)	(+)
Amyloid β
Diffuse plaques	+	+
Neuritic plaques	+	+
TDP-43
Hyperphosphorylated inclusions	+	−
Translocated from nucleus to cytoplasm	−	+
Neuroinflammation	(+)	+
Axonal degeneration	(+)	+
Neuronal loss	+	+
Myelin degradation	?	+

+, present; −, absent; +/−, may be either present or absent; (+), reported present but not formally assessed; ?, unknown.