Teens Connect The World: Brain, Children and Love

One of the greatest sporting events, the Summer Olympics, is just around the corner. Kicking off July 26th in Paris, France, more than 10,000 athletes from over 200 nations will compete in 32 sports (329 medal events) to bring home an Olympic gold medal. Originating in ancient Greece in 776 BCE as a tribute to honor Zeus, the King of the Greek gods, the Olympics have transformed into a global celebration of athleticism and are captivating millions of sports enthusiasts worldwide. While many dream about participating in their chosen discipline, this aspiration only comes true for a small fraction of athletes. Regardless of whether it comes to track and field, swimming, skating, or archery – what is it that distinguishes competitors from those of us who are simply watching? It’s tempting to simply attribute their success to physical characteristics such as strength and agility. However, the true key to elite performance may lie in cognitive processes such as self-regulation, perception, or decision-making. Below is the pursuit to unravel some of the intricate neural and behavioral mechanisms underpinning athletic excellence, unveiling what it really takes to become an Olympic champion.

Self-regulation
Acquiring expertise in a sport requires years of extensive and consistent training. Olympic marathon runners often clock around 100 miles (160 km) or more per week! But that’s not all it takes – strength training, recovery sessions, and physical therapy are also part of their daily schedule. Adopting this kind of lifestyle requires high levels of discipline and self-motivation, enabling the athlete to adhere to rules, routines, and standards to pursue long-term goals, even when faced with distractions or setbacks. Goal setting, goal orientation, self-evaluation, and self-efficacy are just some of the few self-regulatory processes that are critical in Olympian-level discipline. It all begins with effective goal-setting strategies, which entail identifying the intended action or outcome. Numerous studies have indicated that athletes experience the greatest success when setting specific, short-term, self-generated, and moderately difficult goals. With respect to goal orientation, elite athletes tend to excel when balancing task orientation (focusing on improving their own skills) with ego orientation (aiming to win or outperform others). Self-evaluation of performance or setbacks also plays a vital role. Rather than attributing poor performance solely to external circumstances, adjusting own strategies based on adaptive inferences can positively influence future performance. Most importantly though, individuals with high self-efficacy, who genuinely believe in their ability to accomplish goals, are more likely to perform well (Halper & Vancouver, 2016; Moritz et al., 2000). However, Olympic athletes are rarely left to their own devices. While many of these processes are rooted in the athlete’s mind, seeking help from professionals, and receiving coaching can benefit athletes throughout these processes. 

With respect to goal orientation, elite athletes tend to excel when balancing task orientation (focusing on improving their own skills) with ego orientation (aiming to win or outperform others)

Visual Skills and Anticipation

One crucial element in competitive sports is visualizing complex and dynamic scenes. Notably,  team sports offer an environment that is constantly changing: The ball (or whatever instrument is being played with) and opponents or teammates are moving nonstop. Not only are elite athletes quicker and more efficient at searching a visual scene containing sport-specific information, they also differ in their biological motion perception skills. A study conducted by Wei and colleagues (2011) demonstrated that the cortical thickness in the superior temporal sulcus, an area implicated in recognizing complex biological movements (Puce & Perrett, 2003), is larger in athletes compared to non-athletes. This suggests that elite athletes outperform others in perceiving the movement of other individuals, even when there is only little information available in their surroundings. Being able to better perceive others’ motions is essential to predict their next move. It could be part of why elite athletes are better at anticipating the opponent’s actions and related consequences. A study by Aglioti et al. (2008) showed that professional basketball players are faster and more accurate at predicting the outcome of free shots compared to expert watchers –  such as sports journalists – and novices. Even before the ball left the shooter’s hand, which is less than half a second after the motion had started, they could better predict if it was successful or not. Interestingly, in elite athletes there was an increase of motor excitability in areas that would control their shooting hand. Instead of judging the success rate based on the path of the ball, it seems as if, based on the kinematic information provided by the early body movement, they were imagining taking the shot by themselves. The differences between elite athletes and expert watchers indicate that it takes a lot of practicing and playing – not just watching – to develop Olympic-level anticipatory skills.

Decision-Making Skills

All sports involve some kind of decision-making. Take beach volleyball for example: The score is tied at 20-20, and the opponent tosses the ball high and smashes it with a powerful topspin serve at a player. Effortlessly, or so it seems, they move into position and dig the ball perfectly into the air. What appears to come so naturally is actually a complex computational challenge for the brain. The player must evaluate the ball’s path while simultaneously navigating their steps in the hot sand, adjusting their hands and arms, and monitoring the position of their teammate who is to receive the ball. But having encountered similar situations thousands of times, their brains are used to rapidly integrating incoming sensory information to formulate an informed plan of action. Chris Fetsch, an assistant professor of Neuroscience at John Hopkins University explains “What really sets apart the gold medalists […] is the quickness and flexibility with which their brains are converting input from their senses into commands to move their muscles”. But how exactly does that work mechanistically? Most likely, skilled athletes have trained their decision circuits to make quicker and better choices. Decision-making is typically modeled as a process of accumulating information until one or more response thresholds are reached, which would then trigger the appropriate action. However, research on primates shows that decision-making and motor preparation can occur in parallel (Cisek, 2006). This parallel processing might be the key to success: during a situation, multiple motor plans are generated for the most plausible actions to follow based on the current environment. The competition between these plans represents the decision process, and while the selected motor act is carried out through signals from regions like the prefrontal cortex, other options are inhibited. Although representing many possible actions at once seems computationally expensive, it could be what sets elite athletes apart. By beginning to prepare an action before receiving full information and identifying the best action plan based on the current environment, they could gain a speed advantage, ultimately allowing them to outperform their competitors through quick and flexible decision-making.

Imagine taking the decisive penalty kick in a soccer game, attempting the final jump in the long jump competition or executing the last flip turn before swimming the final 50 meters of a race. Considering all the pride, the glory, and the price money at stake – the pressure to perform in these critical moments is enormous!

Staying calm under pressure
However, all the athletic skill, the cognitive abilities, and the years of training become meaningless if in the moment of truth, the Olympians choke under pressure. Imagine taking the decisive penalty kick in a soccer game, attempting the final jump in the long jump competition or executing the last flip turn before swimming the final 50 meters of a race. Considering all the pride, the glory, and the price money at stake – the pressure to perform in these critical moments is enormous! Researchers that are trying to understand the brain processes responsible for poor performance when the stakes are high, have studied how incentives influence performance in a laboratory setting. Participants performed a skilled motor task with substantial amounts of money on the line – up to $100. Generally, an individual’s performance increases with the level of monetary incentive, but only up to a certain point. Beyond this point, greater incentives lead to decreased performance. One significant issue in this regard could be the framing – instead of perceiving the earned money as a potential gain, it might be seen as a potential loss, leading to “choking under pressure”. The ventral striatum, a brain region involved in encoding value and processing reward, plays a crucial role in the interface between motivation and performance. At the time of reward presentation, striatal activity increases in proportion to the reward’s magnitude. However, during the actual performance of the motor task, this pattern reverses such that higher deactivation proportional to the incentive’s magnitude is observed. Most interestingly, this deactivation of striatal activity during task performance directly relates to the behavioral outcome: greater deactivation impairs performance more. The very best athletes might avoid choking under pressure by optimally framing the pivotal task: Focusing on the potential positive outcome instead of worrying about potential failure might lead to success in moments that truly count. 

So whenever you tune in to watch the Olympic games and wonder: How on earth are they so good at this? You’re a little bit smarter now: Remember that their performance is not only rooted in their physique – cognitive processes are also critically involved. It’s a blend of both abilities, coupled with years of dedicated practice and support along the way that has created what you will be looking at – Olympic champions.