Team Handball Experts Outperform Recreational Athletes in Hand and Foot Response Inhibition: A Behavioral Study

Neurocognitive Errors and Noncontact Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries in Professional Male Soccer Players

CONTEXT

Evidence is emerging that core neurocognitive functions such as working memory and inhibitory control (ie, motor-response and attentional inhibition) are linked to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk. Research has been conducted in laboratory settings, but the contribution of neurocognition to actual ACL injuries under real-world conditions is unknown.

OBJECTIVE

To describe the possible neurocognitive errors involved in noncontact ACL injury mechanisms.

DESIGN

Case series.

SETTING

Soccer matches.

PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS

A total of 47 professional male soccer players.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S)

Three independent reviewers evaluated 47 videos of players sustaining noncontact ACL injuries. Neurocognitive errors in inhibitory control were operationalized as follows: (1) motor-response inhibition was scored when a player demonstrated poor decision-making and approached the opponent with high speed that reduced the ability to stop or change the intended action and (2) an attentional error was scored when a player shifted his selective attention away from the relevant task to irrelevant stimuli.

RESULTS

Of 47 noncontact ACL injuries, 26 (55%) were related to a pressing-type injury, 19 (73%) of which involved a deceiving action made by the opponent, suggesting poor inhibitory control of the defender. Of the remaining 21 noncontact ACL injuries (45%), 16 (76%) could be attributed to attentional errors. Agreement among the 3 raters was very good for all items except poor decision-making, which showed fair to good agreement (Fleiss κ = 0.71). Interrater reliability was excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.99-1.00).

CONCLUSIONS

Errors in motor-response inhibitory control and attentional inhibition were common during noncontact ACL injury events in professional male soccer players. The interrater agreement in detecting neurocognitive errors in general was very good.

Stop it! Relationship between sport expertise and response inhibition in elite athletes

Introduction

The dynamic structure of sport games forces players to make time-sensitive decisions and to initiate actions that may then have to be canceled in response to sudden changes in the game situation. Whether and up to which time already initiated movements can still be inhibited is an important criterion for game performance in elite sport. Research indicates that elite athletes show superior motor inhibition performance compared to recreational athletes. However, no study has examined whether differences also emerge among professional elite athletes themselves. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether motor inhibition performance is a differential feature among elite athletes, and whether inhibition performance increases with greater expertise.

Methods

In total of 106 elite athletes (ice hockey, basketball, volleyball, American football, handball, and soccer) completed a PC-based procedure to determine motor inhibition performance using the stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) task for hands and feet. In addition, an expertise score was determined for each elite athlete. Multiple linear regression was used to calculate the relationship between expertise and SSRT.

Results

Results showed that the expertise score of the elite athletes was between 3.7 and 11.7 out of 16 possible points (M_Expertise = 6.8 points, SD = 1.76). The average SSRT of the hands was 224.0 ms (SD = 35.0); of the feet, 257.9 ms (SD = 48.5). Regression results showed a significant relationship between expertise and SSRT (F_(2,101) = 9.38, p = 0.04, R² = 0.06). SSRTs of the hands were significant predictors of expertise (b = -0.23, t = -2.1, p = 0.04).

Discussion

Taken together, results suggest that elite athletes with higher expertise outperform elite athletes with lower expertise, indicating that it is possible to differentiate within elite athletes with respect to inhibition performance of the hands. However, whether expertise affects inhibition performance or vice versa cannot be answered at present.

Effect of different sport environments on proactive and reactive motor inhibition: A study on open- and closed-skilled athletes via mouse-tracking procedure

This study aimed to investigate the effect of different sport environments (open-and closed-skill sports) on proactive and reactive inhibitory processes as two distinct components of motor inhibition. A mouse-tracking procedure was employed to compare behavioral performance among three groups of participants (tennis players, swimmers and non-athletes) in non-sport-specific cued Go/No-Go (GNG) and Stop Signal Task (SST), which mainly engage proactive and reactive inhibitory control, respectively. Reaction times (RTs), inhibitory failures, and Stop Signal Reaction Times (SSRTs) were measured. To investigate dynamic aspects of inhibitory control, movement trajectories classified as one-shot (absence of trajectory alteration reflected in a steep slope) or non-one-shot (non-linear/multipeaked trajectory, with one or multiple corrections) were analyzed and compared among groups. Results showed no group differences in RTs in Go/No-Go and Stop conditions. SSRTs were significant shorter for the athletes than non-athletes in SST, but no differences emerged for inhibitory failures in cued GNG. During inhibitory failures athletes showed higher proportion of non-one-shot movements than non-athletes. Higher proportion of non-one-shot profiles was observed in cued GNG compared to SST. Finally, no differences between open-and closed-skilled athletes were found in both tasks. Our findings suggest that both proactive and reactive inhibitory controls do benefit from sport practice, but open-and closed-skill sports do not differ in influencing inhibitory processes. Movement profile analysis could be a promising, complementary behavioral analysis to integrate for more fine-grained evaluation and differentiation of inhibitory motor control in athletes, specifically when using GNG tasks.

The superior response speed of table tennis players is associated with proactive inhibitory control

Objective

To explore the mechanism behind the faster volitional reaction time (RT) of open skill sports athletes from the perspective of proactive inhibitory control, with the hypothesis that the superior response speed of athletes from open skill sports is related to their enhanced capacity for releasing inhibition.

Methods

Participants were divided into two groups, an experimental group of 27 table tennis players and a control group of 27 non-athletes. By manipulating cue-target onset asynchrony (CTOA) in a simple cue-target detection task, the timing of target presentation occurred in different phases of the disinhibition process. The time needed for disinhibition were compared between groups.

Results

For the experimental group, RT varied with CTOA at delays less than 200 ms; for CTOAs greater than 200 ms, RTs were not significantly different. For the control group, RT varied with CTOA for delays as long as 300 ms.

Conclusions

Table tennis players took less time (200 ms) than non-athletes (300 ms) to complete the disinhibition process, which might partly explain their rapid response speed measured in unpredictable contexts.

Significance

The study provided evidence for disinhibition speed as a new index to assess the capacity of proactive inhibitory control, and provided a new perspective to explore the superior RT of athletes from open skill sports. We also offered support for the fundamental cognitive benefits of table tennis training.

Effects of the Type of Sports Practice on the Executive Functions of Schoolchildren

There is a close relationship between the development of complex motor skills and executive functions during childhood. This study aimed to analyze the differences in different dimensions of executive functions in children practicing an open-skill sport (handball) and a closed-skill sport (athletics) and controls who did not participate in sports activities after a 12-week intervention period. School-aged male and female subjects (n = 90; mean ± standard deviation = 11.45 ± 0.68 years) participated in a non-randomized controlled study. Data analysis was performed using the STATA V.15 statistical software. The athletics intervention promoted semantic fluency (p = 0.007), whereas handball increased inhibition (p = 0.034). Additionally, physical activity improved in both intervention groups (p = < 0.001), whereas sprint performance improved in the handball group following intervention (p = 0.008), lower body muscular power improved in athletics (p = 0.04), and evidence of improvement in upper body muscular strength was noted in handball (p = 0.037). In turn, an increase in the Physical Activity Questionnaire for older Children score showed an association with the Standard Ten scores of executive functions. In conclusion, compared to controls, both athletics and handball induced meaningful improvements in physical activity and executive functions. However, sport-specific adaptations were noted after athletics (i.e., semantic fluency and lower body muscular power) and handball (i.e., inhibition, sprint, and upper-body muscular strength).

Differences in dual task paradigms and executive function ability for recreational athletes in United Arab Emirates

[Purpose] The purpose of this study to measure four components of executive function: (1) cognitive flexibility, (2) inhibition, (3) working memory and (4) processing speed, along with the ability to dual task in recreational athletes. [Participants and Methods] This was a cross-sectional study of (n=102) male and female participants, between the ages of 18–40 years of age across different levels and types of sport related physical activity. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), short version, Dual Task Abilities (DTA) were measured utilizing a quantitative, dual task, gait test and Executive Function (EF) was measured through Stroop Color Word Test and Trail Making Test. [Results] Differences in EF and Dual Task-Interference (DTI) in recreational athletes did not show a significant difference between varying types of sport and level of sport related activity, with reported values high across all groups. Males reported better dual task interference abilities than females, though there were no significant differences in executive function between males and females. Executive function performance was the highest among the age group (18–24 years) population, but there were no significant differences between those in the higher age groups (25–34 years) and (35–40 years). [Conclusion] Overall, those participating in the study exhibited high prevalence of strong EF ability, regardless of sport activity type or level. This may suggest that type and level of sport activity may not be important when considering executive function performance maintenance for recreational athletes.

Delineating adaptive esports involvement from maladaptive gaming: a self-regulation perspective

The last decade has witnessed the rise of electronic sports (esports), yet little is known about how involvement in intensive esports relates to self-regulatory processes, such as executive functioning (EF). In this paper, we review the evidence on EF in problematic and non-problematic video-game use. We also consider research on EF in traditional sports athletes, as well as in 'exercise addiction'. The focus of the review is on two core components of EF, namely response inhibition and cognitive flexibility. The available evidence suggests that EF is a reliable marker for indexing specific types of sport and video-gaming expertise, but does not appear to consistently delineate maladaptive from adaptive video-game involvement. Future research avenues on EF that characterize esport players are suggested to advance this area.