CHICAGO -- It may cost you the game but do yourself a favor and don't hit that soccer ball with your head. That's the latest warning from doctors who recently found that heading, a common technique soccer players use to pass and control the direction of the ball with their heads, causes more brain damage than previously believed.

A new study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America found that even without concussions, repeated head impacts in sports can damage the frontal lobe of the brain and cause long-term cognitive issues.

"The study identifies structural brain abnormalities from repeated head impacts among healthy athletes," says Dr. Michael Lipton, a professor of radiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, in a media release. "The abnormalities occur in the locations most characteristic of CTE, are associated with worse ability to learn a cognitive task and could affect function in the future."