Abstract
Purpose: Recent research in adult badminton athletes has shown the visuomotor reaction time (VMRT) is strongly dependent on the speed of visual signal perception and processing in the brain’s visual motion system. However, it remains unclear if this relation can be confirmed for other visuomotor demanding disciplines as well as different age groups. This study aimed to validate previous findings in international elite youth table tennis players to shed light on the generalizability of neural performance determinants across different visuomotor demanding sports and age groups.Methods: Thirty-seven young elite international table tennis players (18 male, 19 female, mean age: 13.5 years) from 23 nations participated in this study. Participants performed a visuomotor reaction task in response to visual motion stimuli presented at two different motion velocity conditions. Visuomotor performance was evaluated by measuring the electromyographic (EMG) onset as well as the VMRT. In addition, a 64-channel electroencephalography (EEG) system was used to investigate the stimulus and response-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) in the brain’s visual motion sensitive area MT as well as the pre- and supplementary motor cortex indicating the speed of cortical visual and motor information processing, respectively. Correlation and multiple regression analyses identified the neural processes determining visuomotor performance.Results: The VMRT (232 vs. 258 ms, P < 0.001, d = −2.33) and EMG onset (181 vs. 206 ms, P < 0.001, d = −2.14) were accelerated in the fast motion velocity condition which was accompanied by an earlier stimulus-locked N2 (187 vs. 193 ms, P < 0.001, d = −0.80) and later response-locked N2-r (17 vs. −0.1 ms, P < 0.001, d = 1.04). The N2 and N2-r latencies were correlated with EMG onset and VMRT in both velocity conditions and explained between 80% and 90% of the variance in visuomotor reaction speed. Neural processes in BA6 did not differ between stimulus velocity conditions and did not contribute to the regression model.Conclusion: The results validate our previous findings and support the importance of neural visual processes for the visuomotor reaction speed across different visuomotor demanding sports and age groups. This suggests the visual system might be a promising target for specific visual diagnostics and training interventions.
Highlights
Table tennis is one of the fastest sports requiring athletes to perceive the ball and its trajectory within milliseconds to initiate a targeted motor response
The study was conducted during two international table tennis training camps at the National Sports Institute [Institute National des Sports (INS)] in Luxembourg and in cooperation with the National Table Tennis Federation in Luxembourg (FLTT), the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU), the China Table Tennis College Europe (CTTCE) as well as the German Sport University Cologne
For the muscular and behavioral data, t-tests revealed a significantly earlier EMG onset (t(36) = −13.03, P < 0.001, d = −2.14) as well as a faster visuomotor reaction time (VMRT) (t(36) = −14.19, P < 0.001, d = −2.33) in the fast when compared to the slow motion onset velocity condition
Summary
Table tennis is one of the fastest sports requiring athletes to perceive the ball and its trajectory within milliseconds to initiate a targeted motor response. With ball velocities up to 10 ms−1 (Durey and Seydler, 1994) and a distance between players of only about 3 m, athletes have less than 500 ms to perform the movement Behavioral adaptations to these exceptionally high visuomotor demands in table tennis have previously been shown by Akpinar et al (2012) in a coincidence-anticipation experiment where participants had to predict at what time an object arrived at a predefined target point. Over three different stimulus velocity conditions, table tennis players outperformed tennis and badminton athletes only during the fastest condition indicating fast perception and processing of visual information In addition to these findings on coincidence anticipation performance, visuomotor reaction experiments revealed faster reaction times in table tennis players when compared to non-athletes (Bhabhor et al, 2013) as well as experienced tennis players (Ak and Koçak, 2010; Can et al, 2014)
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