Investigating mechanisms of sport-related cognitive improvement using measures of motor learning.

An increasing number of studies have linked engagement in sport or increased physical fitness with improved cognitive performance. Additionally, studies have employed physical activity as an intervention to help with cognition in aging individuals. Despite this, the underlying mechanism (or mechanisms) by which benefits occur remain unclear.

Time-on-task effects on human pupillary and saccadic metrics after theta burst transcranial magnetic stimulation over the frontal eye field.

Pupil size undergoes constant changes primarily influenced by ambient luminance. These changes are referred to as the pupillary light reflex (PLR), where the pupil transiently constricts in response to light. PLR kinematics provides valuable insights into autonomic nervous system function and have significant clinical applications.

Linking tonic and phasic pupil responses to P300 amplitude in an emotional face-word Stroop task.

The locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system, which regulates arousal levels, is important for cognitive control, including emotional conflict resolution. Additionally, the LC-NE system is implicated in P300 generation. If the P300 is mediated by the LC-NE system, and considering the established correlations between LC activity and pupil dilation, P300 amplitude should correlate with task-evoked (phasic) pupil dilation on a trial-by-trial basis.

Use of the P300 event-related potential component to index transcranial direct current stimulation effects in drug users.

Drug use causes significant social and financial problems and these are exacerbated by difficulties in stopping use and subsequent maintenance of abstinence. There is also difficulty in identifying the beneficial treatment for an individual, made more problematic given the high drop-out rates in treatment programs. Here, the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on the amplitude of the P300 event-related potential component, previously suggested to be indicative of successful remission, was measured in recently abstinent amphetamine users.

Acute Exercise Improves Inhibitory Control but Not Error Detection in Male Violent Perpetrators: An ERPs Study With the Emotional Stop Signal Task.

Violence has been linked to the co-occurrence of cognitive dysfunction and altered activations in several brain regions. Empirical evidence demonstrated the benefits of acute exercise on motor inhibition and error detection and their neuronal processing. However, whether such effects also hold for the population with violent behaviors remains unknown.

Critical role of rhythms in prefrontal transcranial magnetic stimulation for depression: A randomized sham-controlled study.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is an alternative treatment for depression, but the neural correlates of the treatment are currently inconclusive, which might be a limit of conventional analytical methods. The present study aimed to investigate the neurophysiological evidence and potential biomarkers for rTMS and intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) treatment. A total of 61 treatment-resistant depression patients were randomly assigned to receive prolonged iTBS (piTBS; N = 19), 10 Hz rTMS (N = 20), or sham stimulation (N = 22).

Revealing the Dynamic Nature of Amplitude Modulated Neural Entrainment With Holo-Hilbert Spectral Analysis.

Patterns in external sensory stimuli can rapidly entrain neuronally generated oscillations observed in electrophysiological data. Here, we manipulated the temporal dynamics of visual stimuli with cross-frequency coupling (CFC) characteristics to generate steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs). Although CFC plays a pivotal role in neural communication, some cases reporting CFC may be false positives due to non-sinusoidal oscillations that can generate artificially inflated coupling values.

The comparisons of inhibitory control and post-error behaviors between different types of athletes and physically inactive adults.

To properly behave and correct mistakes, individuals must inhibit inappropriate actions and detect errors for future behavioral adjustment. Increasing evidence has demonstrated that athletes are superior in cognitive functions and this benefit varied dependent on the types of sport that individuals involved in, but less is known on whether athletes have a different error-related behavioral pattern. The purpose of this study was to compare the behavioral performance of inhibition and error monitoring between individuals who participated in an open-skill sport (n = 12), a closed-skill sport (n = 12), and a sedentary lifestyle (n = 16).

Dynamical EEG Indices of Progressive Motor Inhibition and Error-Monitoring.

Response inhibition has been widely explored using the stop signal paradigm in the laboratory setting. However, the mechanism that demarcates attentional capture from the motor inhibition process is still unclear. Error monitoring is also involved in the stop signal task.

To Go or Not to Go: Degrees of Dynamic Inhibitory Control Revealed by the Function of Grip Force and Early Electrophysiological Indices.

A critical issue in executive control is how the nervous system exerts flexibility to inhibit a prepotent response and adapt to sudden changes in the environment. In this study, force measurement was used to capture "partial" unsuccessful trials that are highly relevant in extending the current understanding of motor inhibition processing. Moreover, a modified version of the stop-signal task was used to control and eliminate potential attentional capture effects from the motor inhibition index.

The brains of elite soccer players are subject to experience-dependent alterations in white matter connectivity.

Soccer is the only major sport with voluntary unprotected head-to-ball contact. It is crucial to determine if head impact through long-term soccer training is manifested in brain structure and connectivity, and whether such alterations are due to sustained training per se. Using diffusion tensor imaging, we documented a comprehensive view of soccer players' brains in a sample of twenty-five right-handed male elite soccer players aged from 18 to 22 years and twenty-five non-athletic controls aged 19-24 years.

Electrophysiological investigation of the effects of Tai Chi on inhibitory control in older individuals.

The possibility that improved inhibitory control in older adults is associated with engagement in non-contact sporting activity, Tai Chi, was investigated. Three groups of participants were compared; a group who regularly took part in Tai Chi (TC), a regularly exercising (RE) group, and a sedentary group (SG). Concurrent electroencephalographic recordings were obtained while a stop-signal inhibitory control task, where speeded responses are needed for most trials, but these must occasionally be withheld when a 'stop signal' is displayed, was performed.

The effects of visual training on sports skill in volleyball players.

While there has been a marked increase in investigation of benefits of sporting engagement and fitness beyond typical health benefits, particularly looking at beneficial effects on cognitive ability, there has been less investigation of whether cognitive training can benefit sporting-specific skills. Here, the effects of simple cognitive training on a sport-related skill were assessed, with the specific hypothesis that training on a visual tracking task would improve the ability of volleyball players to spike the ball on a volleyball court (the volleyball equivalent of a tennis smash). Following training with such a task, improvement in spiking performance was seen when the target was indicated before spike execution but not when it was indicated during execution.

Indices of association between anxiety and mindfulness: a guide for future mindfulness studies.

Mindfulness and anxiety are often linked as inversely related traits and there have been several theoretical and mediational models proposed suggesting such a relationship between these two traits. The current review report offers an account of self-report measures, behavioral, electrophysiological, hemodynamic, and biological studies, which provide converging evidence for an inverse relationship between mindfulness and anxiety. To our knowledge, there are no comprehensive accounts of empirical evidence that investigate this relationship.

Human visual steady-state responses to amplitude-modulated flicker: Latency measurement.

The response latency of steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEPs) is a sensitive measurement for investigating visual functioning of the human brain, specifically in visual development and for clinical evaluation. This latency can be measured from the slope of phase versus frequency of responses by using multiple frequencies of stimuli. In an attempt to provide an alternative measurement of this latency, this study utilized an envelope response of SSVEPs elicited by amplitude-modulated visual stimulation and then compared with the envelope of the generating signal, which was recorded simultaneously with the electroencephalography recordings.

Unraveling nonlinear electrophysiologic processes in the human visual system with full dimension spectral analysis.

Natural sensory signals have nonlinear structures dynamically composed of the carrier frequencies and the variation of the amplitude (i.e., envelope).

Low delta and high alpha power are associated with better conflict control and working memory in high mindfulness, low anxiety individuals.

Working memory capacity (WMC) can predict conflict control ability. Measures of both abilities are impaired by anxiety, which is often inversely linked with mindfulness. It has been shown that a combination of high mindfulness and low anxiety is associated with better conflict control and WMC.

Corrigendum: Better Cognitive Performance Is Associated With the Combination of High Trait Mindfulness and Low Trait Anxiety.

[This corrects the article on p. 627 in vol. 9, PMID: 29780338.

Meditation Effects on the Control of Involuntary Contingent Reorienting Revealed With Electroencephalographic and Behavioral Evidence.

Prior studies have reported that meditation may improve cognitive functions and those related to attention in particular. Here, the dynamic process of attentional control, which allows subjects to focus attention on their current interests, was investigated. Concentrative meditation aims to cultivate the abilities of continuous focus and redirecting attention from distractions to the object of focus during meditation.

Better Cognitive Performance Is Associated With the Combination of High Trait Mindfulness and Low Trait Anxiety.

There are several ways in which cognitive and neurophysiological parameters have been consistently used to explain the variability in cognitive ability between people. However, little has been done to explore how such cognitive abilities are influenced by differences in personality traits. Dispositional mindfulness and anxiety are two inversely linked traits that have been independently attributed to a range of cognitive functions.

Sport, time pressure, and cognitive performance.

Sport participation, fitness, and expertise have been associated with a range of cognitive benefits in a range of populations but both the factors that confer such benefits and the nature of the resulting changes are relatively unclear. Additionally, the interactions between time pressure and cognitive performance for these groups is little studied. Using a flanker task, which measures the ability to selectively process information, and with different time limits for responding, we investigated the differences in performance for participants in (1) an unpredictable, open-skill sport (volleyball), (2) an exercise group engaged in predictable, closed-skill sports (running, swimming), and (3) nonsporting controls.

Motor expertise modulates neural oscillations and temporal dynamics of cognitive control.

The field of motor expertise in athletes has recently been receiving increasing levels of investigation. However, there has been less investigation of how dynamic changes in behavior and in neural activity as a result of sporting participation might result in superiority for athletes in domain-general cognition. We used a flanker task to investigate conflict-related behavioral measures, such as mean reaction time (RT) and RT variability, in conjunction with electroencephalographic (EEG) measures, including N2d, theta activity power, and inter-trial phase coherence (ITPC).

Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence reveals the effects of trait anxiety on contingent attentional capture.

Few studies have investigated the effects of anxiety on contingent attentional capture. The present study examined contingent attentional capture in trait anxiety by applying a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm during electroencephalographic recording. Overall, the behavioral and electrophysiological results showed a larger capture effect when a distractor was the same color as the target compared to when the distractor was not of the target color.

Exploring the contributions of the supplementary eye field to subliminal inhibition using double-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation.

It is widely accepted that the supplementary eye fields (SEF) are involved in the control of voluntary eye movements. However, recent evidence suggests that SEF may also be important for unconscious and involuntary motor processes. Indeed, Sumner et al.