That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Elite Sport Performance

Episode Date: May 8, 2022

We all have a decent idea of the intense physical training professional athletes go through. But what makes the brains of these elite players different? In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind elite sports performance. 

Hi, my name's Olive Kregolson, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. Growing up, I used to play a lot of basketball. I played basketball in high school. I played basketball in college. And I even played a couple of semi-professional seasons in New Zealand and England. But there were obviously people a lot better than me. You know, I remember Larry Bird. He was one of my idols growing up.

An amazing player. And of course, Michael Jordan. And then, you know, Wayne Gretzky here in Canada. And now, you know, I follow a lot of tennis and Serena Williams. You know, what's going on in the brains of these people? Like, how come they're so good? On today's podcast, the neuroscience of elite performance. Well, we've talked about this before. In season one, we talked about Erickson and his famous 10,000 hours of practice to get good at something. So I don't want to review too much of that.

But the idea is pretty straightforward. When Erickson did his seminal study, he was looking at three groups of people, music teachers, professional musicians, and world-class musicians. And the difference between them didn't turn out to be some innate physical ability, but instead it was tied to the fact that the experts had practiced 10,000 hours, which was almost twice as much as the next group, the professional musicians, and considerably more than the music teachers.

So the idea was that mass practice, doing a massive amount of practice is what brings expertise. But what's going on in the brain? So we know that the Michael Jordans of the world, you know, they have practiced a lot. That's what they're famous for. But what on in the brain? So we know that the Michael Jordans of the world, you know, they have practiced a lot. That's what they're famous for. But what happens in the brain?

Well, when you perform a motor skill, one way to think about it, and we've talked about movement before if you go back to the grabbing an apple episode, but basically there's a path of neural circuitry that you need. It involves the premotor cortex, the lateral premotor area, the posterior parietal cortex, the cerebellum, and then finally the primary motor cortex. And within those brain regions, there's this path of circuitry and you need all of those neurons to

perform the skill. Well, when you're practicing, you're basically solidifying that circuitry. And what I mean by that is you're sort of, you know, the neurons that are activated that help you perform the skill successfully get strengthened, and the ones on poor performance that you don't use don't get strengthened. So you're solidifying that pathway. Now, this pathway is susceptible to noise. So what's noise? Well, one way to do this, we've mentioned this before, imagine drinking an energy drink and then trying to thread a needle. It's going to be difficult because your hand's probably literally going to be shaking a little bit more because of the energy drink. And that's noise in the system. The impact of all that caffeine or taurine is basically messing with your motor system.

But this also occurs naturally. If you haven't slept well, depending on your diet, you know, any number of conditions, there's noise in the system. So one of the reasons you can't perform a skill perfectly every time is noise. But the more you practice, the more you head towards that 10,000 hours, the less susceptible the pathway is to noise. And you're going to be more likely to repeat the skill successfully. So you've nailed down that pathway. The pathway is identified and most of the time you have successful performance. You know, if you go on YouTube, growing up here in Victoria, BC, Steve Nash was a big part of the basketball scene and there's a great video of him shooting free throws and he just keeps

shooting and he keeps shooting and he doesn't miss. And the reason is, is because Steve Nash has shot literally hundreds of thousands of free throws, would be my guess. So that pathway is nailed down about as tight as it can. Now that's the motor skills part, but what about the mental part? Well, interestingly, it depends on the sport in terms of whether you need calm or focus. So the posterior parietal cortex is really the center of this argument because it's where visual spatial attention comes from. And when you're calm and relaxed, the posterior parietal cortex uses less attention. And if you actually measure this with EEG or brainwaves, you see an increase

in what we call alpha power. So when people are relaxing, this EEG signal actually increases. And when you focus, that EEG signal decreases. So when you focus, there's actually less alpha power. Now that doesn't mean less brain activity, to be clear. When you're focusing, it requires a lot of brain activity. But interestingly, the relationship with alpha power and EEG is the inverse of what you would think. So less alpha power means more focus or more brain activity. Now back to elite performance. So it depends on what you need for the sport. If it's more useful to be calm, then you'll see a release of this activity in the posterior parietal cortex, which means the expert performer is relaxing. And if you have to really focus in,

well, then you'll see this increase in activity and this decrease in alpha power, like I mentioned. Now, of course, a lot of the time, sports can't be tied to an increase in focus or being completely relaxed. You need balance. And that's, again, part of practice is finding that right level of activity in the posterior parietal cortex. You're not too focused, but you're also not too relaxed. And your brain learns that. So expert performers through all

of that practice have learned to train their posterior parietal cortex, which means visual spatial attention, to get to the right level. And you can actually see this. There's some really cool research studies that look at elite performers that show that their level of EEG alpha power is very consistent trial to trial. So every time they swing a bat or hit a tennis ball, that EEG alpha power is relatively stable. And if you look at novices, it's sort of variable. It's up and down, which means sometimes they're concentrating too much and sometimes they're not concentrating enough. So part of this practice that you do is to train the brain to find the right level of focus, which is balanced with relaxation. And that's all coming from your parietal cortex. You see this with meditation as

well. We did an episode on meditation, but I don't want it. So I don't want to go into it in too much detail, but if the goal of meditation is to relax, you see this increase in EEG alpha power. It's a very common finding, but interestingly enough, there's a kind of meditation called focused attention meditation. When you're doing focused attention meditation, you see a decrease in alpha power and in focused attention meditation, the idea is you basically pick a place or an object or a thought and you really zone in on it. So what you see in sport performance is paralleled in meditation research, which is probably why a lot of professional high level athletes practice mindfulness or meditation, and they say it helps enhance sport performance. Now, other parts of the brain. What's going on in the prefrontal cortex in our elite

athletes? Well, in most sports, we see a decrease in activity in the prefrontal cortex with practice. So early in learning, you see a lot of activity in prefrontal cortex. And that's because when you start to learn a motor skill, you're in what we call the cognitive stage. And in the cognitive stage, you're thinking it through literally. You're thinking about where did my feet go? Where does my arms go? You know, what's the movement I need to do? And with practice, that decreases. And the reason it does is because motor skills pass from a cognitive stage

to an autonomous stage, which is sort of the in-between stage. And then you finally get to what's called the automatic stage, where you're just executing the skill without thought. And when you get to that stage, typically you see a decrease in activity in the prefrontal cortex. Now, in some cases, this isn't entirely true. If you're a football quarterback and you're, you know, about to make a play, there's probably an increase in activity in the prefrontal cortex because you're thinking a lot. And same in any sport if you're about to make a pass. But in general, as you're performing the skill, these elite performers, you see a decrease in activity in the prefrontal cortex. And it just means you're

not thinking about it as much. The motor system is free to execute the skill, and it doesn't want the cognitive logical brain getting in the way. And as with the alpha power stuff related to attention, you can measure this with EEG. If you put something that measures brainwaves on your head, in elite performers, you'll see a decrease in frontal theta power. These are neural oscillations between 4 and 7 hertz, and they literally reflect the activity of the prefrontal cortex. And if you use a different technology, FNIRS,

Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy, basically it's measuring blood flow in the prefrontal cortex. You see a decrease in blood flow with elite performers, unless, of course, they're having to think, like the quarterback example that I used. And now, finally, the zone. You know, a lot of elite performers talk about being in the zone, and a lot of us that are trying to become elite performers want to get in the zone. Well, my lab actually did a cool study with this. A former student of mine, Anthony Pluta, he actually played Major League Baseball and is coached at all levels, and he's one of the top 100 players all time in Canadian baseball history. When he was a graduate

student in my lab, he ran this really cool study. We basically went to a bunch of the local baseball teams, and we were measuring their brain activity before they went up to bat. So they were sitting in the dugout and they were about to go bat and we put on an EEG device and we measured their brain activity. And then they went out and hit the baseball or tried to hit the baseball. And what Anthony found was that people that were successful at hitting the baseball, there was a decrease in beta power. Now, these are neural oscillations between 13 and 30 hertz. And beta power is roughly tied to the idea of the brain working together.

Now, if there's a lot of beta power, it means the brain's trying too hard to be in sync. So brain region A and B and C are really going on overdrive to make things work out. Now this decrease in beta power could be associated with being calm. A little bit different than the attentional focused version of calm. This is more just an overall relaxed state of the brain. And funnily enough, when players were successful hitting the baseball, there was this decrease in beta power. And when they were unsuccessful, there was this decrease. So quite literally, Anthony's results showed that the zone was a measurable brain state that we could hit with EEG measurements. And also that it literally reflected what kind of makes sense. You know, if you're going up to hit a baseball, you kind of want your brain to not be thinking about it too much. So in summary,

the neuroscience of expert performance. Well, first of all, tons of practice, which solidifies the motor circuitry you need in the motor regions of the brain. Learning to get the right amount of calm or focus, so that balance of visual spatial attention. There is, of course, the prefrontal cortex where we see this decrease in activity with learning, which is good, except, of course, the prefrontal cortex where we see this decrease in activity with learning, which is good, except, of course, the example I noted, which is if the skill is required to think. And then finally, the zone, this overall decrease in brain activity that reflects a sort of level of the brain being relaxed and ready to perform. Okay, just a couple of reminders. Remember, we do have merch. It's on

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