Abstract
Recent studies provided compelling evidence that physical activity leads to specific changes on a functional and structural level of brain organization. The observed neural adaptions are specific to the sport and manifested in those brain regions which are associated with neuronal processing of sport-specific skills. Techniques of non-invasive brain stimulation have been shown to induce neuroplastic changes and thereby also facilitate task performance. In the present study, we investigated the influence of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the leg area of the primary motor cortex (M1) on simple reaction time tasks (RTT) and tapping tasks (TT) as a comparison between trained football (FB) and handball players (HB) and non-athletes (NA). We hypothesized that anodal tDCS over M1 (leg area) would lead to specific behavioral gains in RTT and TT performance of the lower extremity as compared to sham condition. On an exploratory level, we aimed at revealing if trained athletes would show stronger tDCS-induced behavioral gains as compared to NA, and, furthermore, if there are any differential effects between FB and HB. A total number of 46 participants were enrolled in a sham-controlled, double-blinded, cross-over study. A test block consisting of RTT and TT was performed before, during, after as well as 30 min after a 20-min tDCS application. Additionally, the specificity of tDCS-induced changes was examined by testing upper extremity using the same experimental design as a control condition. Our data showed no group- or sport-specific tDCS-induced effects (online and offline) on RTT and TT neither for lower nor upper extremities. These findings indicate that neither athletes nor NA seems to benefit from a brief period of tDCS application in speed-related motor tasks. However, more knowledge on neuronal processing of RTT and TT performance in trained athletes, the influence of tDCS parameters including stimulation sites, and the effect of inter-individual differences are required in order to draw a comprehensive picture of whether tDCS can help to enhance motor abilities on a high-performance level.
Highlights
A variety of studies suggest that physical exercise leads to specific changes on a functional and structural level of brain organization (Colcombe et al, 2006; Bullitt et al, 2009; Voss et al, 2010; Erickson et al, 2012)
The present study aimed to investigate whether 20 min of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the leg area of the M1 is capable to affect motor tDCS-Effects in Athletes performance in a simple reaction time (RTT) and tapping task (TT) for both upper and lower extremities
Using common tDCS parameters [see ‘‘Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation’’ section for further details], our results showed no effect of anodal tDCS on reaction time tasks (RTT) and tapping tasks (TT) performance neither as online gains nor offline
Summary
A variety of studies suggest that physical exercise leads to specific changes on a functional and structural level of brain organization (Colcombe et al, 2006; Bullitt et al, 2009; Voss et al, 2010; Erickson et al, 2012). Concerning brain structure, a study by Meier et al (2016), for example, showed that handball players have an increased volume of gray matter (GM) in the hand area of the primary motor cortex (M1), while ballet dancers are characterized by an increased GM volume in the foot area of M1. These results indicate that the observed functional and structural adaptions are sportspecific/ physical activity-dependent and seem to manifest in those brain regions that are involved in the neural processing of sport-specific skills
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