Wilken Saskia, Böttcher Adriana, Beste Christian, Raab Markus, Hoffmann Sven
General Psychology: Judgment, Decision Making, Action, Institute of Psychology, University of Hagen, Hagen, Germany.
Cognitive Neurophysiology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany; University Neuropsychology Center, Faculty of Medicine, TU Dresden, Germany.
Neuropsychologia. 2025 Mar 12;209:109085. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109085. Epub 2025 Feb 1.
Athletes specializing in sports demanding rapid predictions and hand-eye coordination are highly trained in predicting the consequences of motor commands. This can be framed as highly efficient action emulation, but the neural underpinnings of this remain elusive. We examined the neural processes linked to the training effect of athletes (4000 h of training) by employing a continuous pursuit tracking task and EEG data. We manipulated feedback availability by intermittently occluding the cursor. As a performance measure, we used the distance between cursor and target (position error), the angle between the cursor and target movement direction (direction error) and the magnitude of cursor acceleration (acceleration error) to quantify movement strategy. In EEG data, we investigated beta, alpha, and theta frequency band oscillations. Athletes' position error is lower than non-athletes' when there is no feedback about the cursor location, but direction error is not. We found no quantitative power differences in the investigated frequency bands, but evidence that athletes and non-athletes accomplish action emulation through different functional neuroanatomical structures, especially when alpha and beta band activity is concerned. We surmise that non-athletes seemed to rely on top-down inhibitory control to predict guesses on cursor trajectories in the absence of cursor position feedback. In contrast, athletes might benefit from enhanced inhibitory gating mechanisms in the ventral stream and the integration of sensory and motor processes in the insular cortex, which could provide them with processing advantages in computing forward models. We further reflect that this advantage might be supported by alpha band activity in athletes' motor cortex, suggesting less inhibitory gating and a higher likelihood of executing integrated sensorimotor programs. We posit that current framings of neuroanatomical structures and neurophysiological processes in the action emulation framework must be revised to better capture superior motor performance.
专门从事需要快速预测和手眼协调运动的运动员，在预测运动指令的后果方面接受了高强度训练。这可以被视为高效的动作模拟，但其中的神经基础仍然难以捉摸。我们通过采用连续追踪任务和脑电图数据，研究了与运动员训练效果（4000小时训练）相关的神经过程。我们通过间歇性遮挡光标来控制反馈的可用性。作为一项性能指标，我们使用光标与目标之间的距离（位置误差）、光标与目标运动方向之间的角度（方向误差）以及光标加速度的大小（加速度误差）来量化运动策略。在脑电图数据中，我们研究了β、α和θ频段振荡。当没有关于光标位置的反馈时，运动员的位置误差低于非运动员，但方向误差并非如此。我们在研究的频段中未发现定量的功率差异，但有证据表明，运动员和非运动员通过不同的功能性神经解剖结构来完成动作模拟，尤其是在涉及α和β频段活动时。我们推测，在没有光标位置反馈的情况下，非运动员似乎依赖自上而下的抑制性控制来预测光标轨迹的猜测。相比之下，运动员可能受益于腹侧流中增强的抑制性门控机制以及岛叶皮质中感觉和运动过程的整合，这可以为他们在计算前向模型时提供处理优势。我们进一步思考，这种优势可能得到运动员运动皮质中α频段活动的支持，这表明抑制性门控较少，执行整合的感觉运动程序的可能性更高。我们认为，必须修订动作模拟框架中当前对神经解剖结构和神经生理过程的描述，以更好地捕捉卓越的运动表现。
