Differences of attentional networks function in athletes from open-skill sports: an functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attentional networks function characteristics of interceptive and strategic sports athletes from open-skill sports. We used a revised lateralized attention network task to measure attentional networks efficiency and activation related to flanker conflict effects, alerting effects, and orienting effects changes on the right frontoparietal network using functional near-infrared spectroscopy in 20 strategic sports athletes, 20 interceptive sports athletes, and 22 college students. The interceptive sports athletes had the fastest overall reaction time. Strategic sports athletes had the highest accuracy and smallest flanker conflict effect on accuracy. Compared with non-athletes, strategic sports athletes had a higher alerting effect, validity effect, and disengaging effect on reaction time; the disengaging effect was particularly higher than that in the interceptive sports athletes. This was accompanied by higher activity in the right frontoparietal network. The open-skill athletes demonstrate significantly more efficient attentional function compared to non-athletes. Athletes from interceptive sports demonstrated increased speed when solving conflict, while those from strategic sports demonstrated higher accuracy. In addition, top-down control appears to play an important role in strategic sports athletes making a cautious decision. This can be attributed to the right frontoparietal network.