Abstract
Multidisciplinary approaches have demonstrated that the brain is potentially modulated by the long-term acquisition and practice of specific skills. Chess playing can be considered a paradigm for shaping brain function, with complex interactions among brain networks possibly enhancing cognitive processing. Dynamic network analysis based on resting-state magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) can be useful to explore the effect of chess playing on whole-brain fluidity/dynamism (the chronnectome). Dynamic connectivity parameters of 18 professional chess players and 20 beginner chess players were evaluated applying spatial independent component analysis (sICA), sliding-time window correlation, and meta-state approaches to rs-fMRI data. Four indexes of meta-state dynamic fluidity were studied: i) the number of distinct meta-states a subject pass through, ii) the number of switches from one meta-state to another, iii) the span of the realized meta-states (the largest distance between two meta-states that subjects occupied), and iv) the total distance travelled in the state space. Professional chess players exhibited an increased dynamic fluidity, expressed as a higher number of occupied meta-states (meta-state numbers, 75.8 ± 7.9 vs 68.8 ± 12.0, p = 0.043 FDR-corrected) and changes from one meta-state to another (meta-state changes, 77.1 ± 7.3 vs 71.2 ± 11.0, p = 0.043 FDR-corrected) than beginner chess players. Furthermore, professional chess players exhibited an increased dynamic range, with increased traveling between successive meta-states (meta-state total distance, 131.7 ± 17.8 vs 108.7 ± 19.7, p = 0.0004 FDR-corrected). Chess playing may induce changes in brain activity through the modulation of the chronnectome. Future studies are warranted to evaluate if these potential effects lead to enhanced cognitive processing and if “gaming” might be used as a treatment in clinical practice.
Highlights
Multidisciplinary approaches have demonstrated that the brain is potentially modulated by the long-term acquisition and practice of specific skills
We considered five connectivity patterns (CPs) of Dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC), which are reported in Fig. 1. dFNC was expressed as a weighted sum of the discretized five-dimensional CPs, considering that 85 = 32,768 distinct five-dimensional www.nature.com/scientificreports
Professional chess players showed greater dynamic fluidity, as they occupied a higher number of meta-states and changed from one meta-state to another more often than beginner chess players
Summary
Multidisciplinary approaches have demonstrated that the brain is potentially modulated by the long-term acquisition and practice of specific skills. Multidisciplinary research efforts have progressively demonstrated that the brain is potentially modulable by the long-term acquisition and practice of specific skills[5,6] From this point of view, several studies have clearly reported how chess playing can be considered a paradigm that may induce long term changes in the brain. With this more flexible approach multiple states might be represented to varying degrees at the same point in time, exhibiting lesser distortion in the features under investigation since contributions of all overlapping states are considered[32], providing a much more condensed summary measure of dynamic functional connectivity In this view, objective measures of meta-state dynamic fluidity may be computed, such as the number of meta-states a subject passes through or the overall distance travelled by each subject through the state space. This highly reproducible approach[31,33] has been already applied to schizophrenia[31] and to neurodegenerative disorders[34] and has helped in further understanding the neural basis of brain functioning[22,35,36,37,38]
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