Brain Neural Mechanism Research On Decision Making Of Elite Volleyball Athletes In Sports Situation

The information processing of sports decision making is one of the most important human cognitive functions which is an important component of executive function in human beings. For one century, numerous research methods including behavior, eye movements, EEG and neuroimaging have been used to examine the cognitive and neural mechanisms. However, the exact neural mechanisms of sports decision making processing and its plasticity accompanying training are still unclear because of the limitations in previous studies. Research on these questions would not only be beneficial for our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying sport decision making processing, but also provide important implications to the related sports events and sports decision making training of athletes.This paper is aimed to address the above questions in behavioral test and MRI studies. It includes three studies that integrate each other.In Study One, validity of volleyball sports decision making test system was verified and decision making of athlets of different level were discussed through sports decision making behavioral test.It was found that behavioral results of experts, intermediates and novices come to the same thing. Experts have the best accuracy and reaction times of the decision making. Intermediates have the intermediate accuracy and reaction times of the decision making. Novices have the worst accuracy and reaction times of the decision making. Sports decision making level will improve along with motor level. It was showed that volleyball sports decision making test system is very effective test software.In Study Two, brain structure will be plasticity after motor learning and training was discussed through MRI structure imaging. The results showed that gray matter volume of athletes is significantly different from college students in sup LOC. Cerebral cortex thickness of athletes is significantly different from college students in sup LOC. In Study Three, elite volleyball athletes will activate brain region when they are decision making tasks was discussed through fMRI. We found that after touching volleyball condition showed the same activation in behavioral and fMRI test compared with touching condition. Behavioral results showed that elite volleyball athletes are much better than college students in the decision making test. It is the same result with Study One. Functional MRI results showed that it was significant different between volleyball athletes and college students, volleyball athletes activate much less than college students in Occipital Pole and Occipital Fusiform Gyrus that play important roles in visual information processing.In conclusion, we found:1) It is significantly different in sport decision making level with different participants. Elite athletes have the best accuracy and reaction times than others.2) Gray matter volume of athletes are significantly different from college students in sup LOC. Cerebral cortex thickness of athletes is significantly different from college students in sup LOC.3) Elite volleyball athletes activate much less than college students in Occipital Pole and Occipital Fusiform Gyrus that play important roles in visual processing.