Chapter 11 - Highly Accurate Mental Rehearsals: Correlation with Top Performance in Sports

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the remarkable temporal reproducibility of mental rehearsals (MR). It is an extremely high level brain function that is routinely performed, for example, by many musicians, dancers, athletes, pilots, and surgeons. Anecdotally, and in some controlled studies, these MRs are known to complement actual rehearsals of the highly skilled task in improving performance. This chapter is meant especially to anyone who follows sports. To understanding higher brain function, it is important to focus on the high end of the range of cognitive tasks, by examining the performances of professionals in highly trained demanding tasks. Furthermore, the chapter emphasizes on the existence of an accurate and accessible clock in the human central nervous system. A test of self-awakening was performed by recording the lights out time, planned awakening time, and actual awakening time. The results showed that planned awakening times varied, thus reducing the possibility that environmental cues determined the awakening times. The striking finding is extreme accuracy in the time domain. This performance suggests the operation in the brain of a continuously accessed clock. This chapter also discusses high-level performance in sports and MR time duration reproducibility.