To succeed in sports, for example, to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games, an athlete must exceed the limits of human capabilities and perform better than his competitors. We have already said that success in sports depends not only on physical fitness, but also on many other factors. For example, the age of athletes plays an important role. However, the brain is responsible for reactions and any body movements in general. Therefore, scientists have long been trying to understand how the brains of outstanding athletes differ from all other people, and such differences have already been discovered.
The brain of athletes has a number of differences from the brain of ordinary people. Photo source: sport-pulse.kz
Contents
- 1 Athletes process visual signals faster
- 2 Athletes are better at forecasting
- 3 The ability to focus and distribute attention affects success in sports
- 4 Why do athletes have different brains
Athletes process visual signals faster
In many sports, high speed visual processing is essential. For example, in auto racing, tennis, boxing, and various team sports such as hockey and basketball, it is essential to quickly assess the situation and react to it instantly. Sometimes athletes only have a fraction of a second to do this.
A 2013 study found that successful professional hockey players, football players, and some other athletes process visual information better and faster than athletes in the same sports, but at a lower skill level. In addition, professionals showed higher results compared to ordinary people who do not play sports.
During the experiment, people were tested for their ability to focus on objects moving on the screen and track them. What's most interesting is that professional athletes not only showed better results than people from the other two groups, but were also able to improve their results faster when repeating the task. Ordinary athletes, although they lost to the professionals, coped with the task better than ordinary people.
An important ability of athletes is forecasting. Photo source: championat.com
Athletes are better at forecasting
In many sports, such as baseball or tennis, it is important to accurately predict where the ball will end up and how fast it will arrive in order to hit it. Many other sports also require accurate predictions. For example, even professional divers have to perceive the movements of living creatures underwater and predict their intentions.
Some studies have shown that professional divers have a thicker superior temporal sulcus (STS) than novices. This area of the brain is known to play an important role in perceiving the movement of other living beings, and also helps decipher the intentions behind these movements. In other words, it is essentially responsible for prediction.
The success of athletes often depends on the ability to focus and distribute attention. Photo source: rbc.ru
The ability to focus and distribute attention affects success in sports
An important ability of athletes, on which success also depends, is the ability to concentrate attention. A 2018 study showed that experienced tennis players are able to stretch out moments of so-called “intense visual concentration,” which are also called “quiet eye periods.”
Another study by researchers at Florida State University found that long, extended periods of “quiet eye” were associated with better shots. And there are other studies that suggest the link between skill and quiet eye period is not unique to tennis, but to other sports as well.
But in addition to focusing, athletes often need to distribute their attention correctly and dynamically switch between different modes of thinking. In fact, these skills are also required in everyday life, for example, when a person cleans the house and listens to a podcast at the same time.
Team athletes have a higher ability to distribute attention. Photo source: sport24.by
A 2022 study showed that athletes also cope with this task much better than other people. Moreover, athletes in team sports had particularly high skills. According to scientists, they are distinguished by their cognitive flexibility and ability to correctly distribute attention.
Why do athletes have different brains
The brains of athletes differ in some other ways. For example, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany found that athletes who demonstrated high skill in the javelin throw and long jump had significant differences in subcortical corticostriatal connections, which play an important role in coordinating motor actions.
But what drives these changes? There's no doubt that genetics play a role. For example, the brains of some successful athletes may be born with an easier time expanding the neural circuits needed for certain skills. Just as some people are born with stronger muscles.
Sports develop certain brain abilities. Photo source: sport-pulse.kz
But, obviously, no less important is the role played by the sports themselves, which not only strengthens the body, but also trains the brain, improves its functioning, and prolongs its youth. In this case, a certain advantage is given to athletes by the desire for glory. However, the degree of this desire, it seems, also depends on genes.
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For example, employees of the University of Parma in Italy found in their study that the DAT gene (the active dopamine transporter gene) deserves special attention. It is also known that it is involved in energy expenditure, movement and reward seeking.