Department of Movement Neuroscience, Faculty of Sport Science, Leipzig University, 04109, Leipzig, Germany.
Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Potsdam, 14476, Potsdam, Germany.
Brain Topogr. 2023 Jul;36(4):500-516. doi: 10.1007/s10548-023-00963-y. Epub 2023 Apr 29.
There is a growing interest to understand the neural underpinnings of high-level sports performance including expertise-related differences in sport-specific skills. Here, we aimed to investigate whether expertise level and task complexity modulate the cortical hemodynamics of table tennis players. 35 right-handed table tennis players (17 experts/18 novices) were recruited and performed two table tennis strokes (forehand and backhand) and a randomized combination of them. Cortical hemodynamics, as a proxy for cortical activity, were recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, and the behavioral performance (i.e., target accuracy) was assessed via video recordings. Expertise- and task-related differences in cortical hemodynamics were analyzed using nonparametric threshold-free cluster enhancement. In all conditions, table tennis experts showed a higher target accuracy than novices. Furthermore, we observed expertise-related differences in widespread clusters compromising brain areas being associated with sensorimotor and multisensory integration. Novices exhibited, in general, higher activation in those areas as compared to experts. We also identified task-related differences in cortical activity including frontal, sensorimotor, and multisensory brain areas. The present findings provide empirical support for the neural efficiency hypothesis since table tennis experts as compared to novices utilized a lower amount of cortical resources to achieve superior behavioral performance. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the task complexity of different table tennis strokes is mirrored in distinct cortical activation patterns. Whether the latter findings can be useful to monitor or tailor sport-specific training interventions necessitates further investigations.
越来越多的人希望了解高水平运动表现的神经基础，包括与运动专项技能相关的专业差异。在这里，我们旨在研究专业水平和任务复杂性是否会调节乒乓球运动员的皮质血液动力学。我们招募了 35 名右撇子乒乓球运动员（17 名专家/18 名新手），并让他们执行两种乒乓球击球动作（正手和反手）和它们的随机组合。使用功能近红外光谱记录皮质血液动力学（作为皮质活动的替代物），并通过视频记录评估行为表现（即目标准确性）。使用非参数无阈值聚类增强分析皮质血液动力学的专业和任务差异。在所有条件下，乒乓球专家的目标准确性都高于新手。此外，我们观察到广泛的集群中存在与感觉运动和多感觉整合相关的大脑区域的专业差异。与专家相比，新手通常在这些区域表现出更高的激活。我们还确定了皮质活动中的任务相关差异，包括额部、感觉运动和多感觉大脑区域。本研究结果为神经效率假说提供了经验支持，因为与新手相比，乒乓球专家使用较少的皮质资源来实现更好的行为表现。此外，我们的研究结果表明，不同乒乓球击球动作的任务复杂性反映在不同的皮质激活模式中。这些发现是否可以用于监测或调整特定于运动的训练干预措施，需要进一步研究。
