Increased cerebellar gray matter volume in head chefs.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Chefs exert expert motor and cognitive performances on a daily basis. Neuroimaging has clearly shown that that long-term skill learning (i.e., athletes, musicians, chess player or sommeliers) induces plastic changes in the brain thus enabling tasks to be performed faster and more accurately. How a chef's expertise is embodied in a specific neural network has never been investigated.

Methods

Eleven Italian head chefs with long-term brigade management expertise and 11 demographically-/ psychologically- matched non-experts underwent morphological evaluations.

Results

Voxel-based analysis performed with SUIT, as well as, automated volumetric measurement assessed with Freesurfer, revealed increased gray matter volume in the cerebellum in chefs compared to non-exp

SUBMITTER: Cerasa A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5300254 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature