Study targets the brain and athletic success
Mario Liotti, 778.782.4561; 778.231.1965 (cell), Mario_liotti@sfu.ca
Hap Davis, 403.262.3737
Marianne Meadahl, PAMR, 778.782.4323
Ready for a place on the podium? Athletes gunning for such a position at the Winter Olympics may be in their best physical shape but their success will have just as much to do with their mental outlook.
Simon Fraser University psychologist Mario Liotti’s research shows that mood, along with brain activity and hormonal changes associated with success or failure, can have critical roles in determining future competitive outcomes.
How to harness those changes to the best possible advantage is becoming key to an athlete’s coaching team.
Liotti, working with Hap Davis, psychologist for Swim Canada, and a team of others, studies brain activity in elite athletes to determine what changes take place as they re-experience recent competitive performances by watching videos of personal successes or failures.
Their latest study involved a group of 26 elite athletes, including 14 who failed at Olympic qualifying rounds or at Olympic competitions, and another dozen who were medalists at the Olympic or world championship level.
Mood responses were tracked with questionnaires while neural activity was monitored by magnetic resonance imaging. Saliva samples before and after viewing provided hormonal data.
As expected, athletes re-experiencing their successful performance felt significantly happier than failed athletes. Successful athletes also showed an increase in neural activity in the right premotor cortex, an area of the brain that plans actions.
They also registered an increase in the ratio of testosterone to cortisol, while athletes viewing failures showed no hormonal change.
Testosterone is typically linked to aggressive behavior and social dominance. In contrast, cortisol is associated with a stress response.
Liotti says high testosterone over cortisol can be explained by “confident competitive challenge” that is not accompanied by a correspondent increase in stress levels – which instead characterize the experience of competitive failure.
“We were interested to see how the levels of both of these hormones would change during the sequence of watching their videos,” says Liotti, noting that little is known about hormonal responses associated with success, or how hormonal responses to success and failure compare.
In earlier tests (published in Science, 2006) with elite swimmers who failed to qualify for the 2004 Olympics, researchers found that the premotor cortex, which is responsible for arm and leg movements required in swimming, appeared inhibited as they watched their video clips.
The researchers suggest that could also explain why athletes have difficulty getting back on top of their game.
Managing competitive stress, thinking positive and visualizing wins have all become critical to an elite athlete’s regimen, Liotti notes. He says further research could potentially lead to the development of interventions or treatments for modifying the changes researchers have identified.
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