Sparsely Wiring Connectivity in the Upper Beta Band Characterizes the Brains of Top Swimming Athletes.

ABSTRACT: Human brains are extremely energy costly in neural connections and activities. However, it is unknown what is the difference in the brain connectivity between top athletes with long-term professional trainings and age-matched controls. Here we ask whether long-term training can lower brain-wiring cost while have better performance. Since elite swimming requires athletes to move their arms and legs at different tempos in time with high coordination skills, we selected an eye-hand-foot complex reaction (CR) task to examine the relations between the task performance and the brain connections and activities, as well as to explore the energy cost-efficiency of top athletes. Twenty-one master-level professional swimmers and 23 age-matched non-professional swimmers as controls were recruited to p

SUBMITTER: Pei X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8322235 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature