Abstract
(1) Background: Stress and pressure during competition and training impair athletes’ performance in sports. However, the influence of mental stress on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) functioning in an athlete during the visual simulation task is unknown. The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate hemodynamic responses during the visual-simulation task that induces pressure and stress using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. (2) Methods: Ten archers and ten non-athlete collegiate students performed a visual-simulation task. Participants’ current stress levels were collected using a visual analog scale before and after the task. Average oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO), deoxygenated hemoglobin (HbR), and total hemoglobin (HbT) levels and their variability (standard deviation (SD) HbO, SD HbR, and SD HbT) were computed to compare the neural efficiency between athlete and non-athlete. (3) Results: In general, both groups exhibited increased stress levels after the simulation task, and there was no group difference in overall average hemodynamic response from PFC and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). While the average hemodynamic response level did not differ between groups, variability in hemodynamic responses from the archer group showed a more stable pattern than the non-athlete group. (4) Conclusion: Under this experimental setting, decreasing the variability in hemodynamic responses during the visual simulation, potentially via stabilizing the fluctuation of PFC, was characterized by the stress-related compensatory neural strategy of elite archers.
Highlights
Studies investigating human stress responses have received extensive attention, because high levels of stress over long durations relate to the development of mental and physical health problems such as cardiovascular disorders [1,2], anxiety disorder [3], and obesity [4]
Ten elite archers (4 males and 6 females, M age = 26.8, SD = 4.1 years) that are currently registered in the Korea Archery Association and ten collegiate students (7 males and 3 females, M age = 23.2, SD = 3.6 years) that participated in the archery class were recruited and were right-hand dominant according to self-reports
The visual analog scale (VAS) data from pre- and post-simulation tasks were analyzed to test the effectiveness of the stress manipulation
Summary
Studies investigating human stress responses have received extensive attention, because high levels of stress over long durations relate to the development of mental and physical health problems such as cardiovascular disorders [1,2], anxiety disorder [3], and obesity [4]. Some studies have demonstrated that moderate levels of stress are linked to an improvement in cognitive abilities [5] and physical performance [6], whereas high levels of stress are associated with an impairment of cognitive functions, in cognitive flexibility [7] and executive functions [8]. Both outstanding physical abilities and cognitive skills that are susceptible to stress levels—such as perception, attention, working memory, and decision-making—are crucial for success at the highest level of sports. Due to the lack of robust technologies, investigations involving high levels of cognitive processing important for sports performance have to date been restricted to the laboratory, involving responses to stimuli that are not closely related to sports performance [7,9]
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