Mind of the athlete

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.....Over the last few decades science has started to look inside the mind of the

athlete. What they have found is a brain not only finely tuned for the demands

of their particular sport, but one that may also carry a mental advantage to

situations beyond the sports field. This research also provides a unique context

for studying novel and important questions about the human mind, such as how the

mind and body work together to rewire brain circuits over years of practice.

With increasingly sophisticated brain imaging techniques, we can also start to

actually see what the brain is capable of at the highest level of physical and

mental expertise. In turn we can see how the mind of elite athletes from

distinct sports may compare to expert musicians, dancers, artists, yoga masters,

or highly skilled video gamers. All this leads to a better understanding of just

how flexible our brains are, and perhaps why we excel at some activities and not

others.

For a long time, research on the athlete's mind focused on studying the athlete

in the context of their sport. For example, we know that elite athletes are

faster and more accurate at remembering and later recalling meaningful play

formations from their own sport. They are also quicker and more efficient at

searching a visual scene containing sport-specific information, especially when

the target is something relevant to their sport, such as soccer players

searching for the ball in a realistic soccer scene.

Research has also shown that expert athletes are better at anticipating the

actions of their opponents and the consequences of those actions, based on

sport-specific contextual information. For instance, an elite cricket player

need only see the pitcher's preparatory arm movements before the ball is

released to judge where the ball will bounce and its trajectory into the hitting

zone, while non-experts are more likely to look at both relevant and irrelevant

visual aspects of the pitch.

A research group in Italy recently investigated this same phenomenon in

basketball. They found that elite players could predict the outcome of the

free-throw earlier and more accurately than a group of expert viewers (e.g.,

journalists and coaches) and novices, by using cues from the shooter's hand

movements at ball release. Before the ball even left the shooter's hand, only

486 ms after the shot motion started, expert athletes could predict success with

greater than 30 percent accuracy, while expert watchers and novices were only at

about 10 percent accuracy. At the critical time of ball release (781 ms after

the start of the shot) experts were about 75 percent accurate while expert

watchers and novices hovered around 40 percent. Even more fascinating, they

found that what made the difference for elite players was the excitability of

the brain area that would control their shooting hand. It's as if the expert

brain was, subconsciously, imagining taking the shot themselves and the moment

when the shot left their finger tips was the " aha moment, " the best moment for

predicting if the shot would drop.......

Another question is: after years of practice in a fast-paced sport like

basketball or tennis, would an elite athlete acquire the ability to respond

faster to anything in their environment? Does sport, in other words, sharpen the

mind? Different studies have come to different conclusions. However, recent

research by myself and colleagues at the University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, compiled all the

results from a variety of studies conducted over the years by scientists around

the world. We found that, overall, elite athletes did show faster response times

in tasks outside the context of athletics.

Similarly, a recent study by Leila Overney and colleagues at the Brain Mind

Institute in Lausanne, Switzerland, showed that tennis athletes had greater

precision in detecting differences in the speed of dots expanding toward them

and showed faster visual perception than tri-athletes and non-athletes. At the

same time, the same study showed that although tennis players were more accurate

at finding a tennis ball in tennis snap-shots, they were no more accurate at

finding the tennis ball in sport scenes unrelated to tennis. This study points

out that some general mental abilities may be gained from sport training, while

others may be sport-specific.

In our analysis we also found athletes have an advantage in what is known as

" changing the breadth of visual attention. " Visual attention is the ability to

focus on what is currently relevant to whatever you are doing (whether it be one

or multiple things) while ignoring distractions. Breadth of attention refers to

how many things and how much of the environment you are paying attention to at

any one time. For example, a wide breadth of attention is necessary for driving

in a busy roadway where there are cross-walks with bold pedestrians jumping out

at any moment compounded with bike lanes, merging traffic, potential

stop-lights, and maybe even your GPS companion directing you where to go. Think

downtown Chicago at rush-hour. Now imagine you find yourself lost and while at a

stop-light you decide to really " focus " on the map on your GPS module. You tune

out the radio, any yapping passengers, all street sounds and sights, and direct

tunnel vision to the GPS screen.

Shifting the breadth of attention is essential in sports. A basketball player

dribbling down the court must focus on the ball, their teammates, and their

opponents, while filtering out the crowd. This requires broad breadth of

attention. Free-throw time ensues and now they must tunnel into their pre-shot

routine, the ball, and the basket.

So the next time you're watching your favorite athlete and you ask yourself " how

do they do it? " - remember their athletic grace is rooted in as much their mind

as their body. Somewhere where the two meet, years of practice and hard work

have created a brain sculpted for their sport and perhaps beyond.

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Carruthers

Wakefield, UK