Extensive brain damage caused by a career in professional wrestling is far more likely than steroids to have led Chris Benoit to kill his family and then himself, medical experts said on Wednesday.

Neurologists with the Sports Legacy Institute who examined Benoit's brain found it pockmarked throughout with evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), whose symptoms include depression, dementia and erratic behavior.

CTE is believed to afflict 20 percent of professional boxers and was found in four professional American football players aged 36 to 50 who died in recent years -- two by suicide -- after showing erratic behavior, the institute said.

[Yahoo]