During this weekend’s Super Bowl, New England Patriots offensive lineman Jared Wilson will wear a Guardian Cap, a helmet cover designed to blunt head impacts. But conflicting claims by the NFL and Guardian Sports bring the benefit of the caps into question, according to a recent article by Ken Belson for The New York Times.

In a first-of-its-kind study with active college football players, researchers investigated the potential impact of a transcranial photobiomodulation (PBM) intervention, using a commercially available headset to deliver near-infrared light to the brain through the skull.