Investigation Of Brain Functional And Structural Features In Elite Basketball Players During Multiple Object Tracking

Motor skill learning is associated with neuroplastic changes in the brain.Behavioral studies have shown that athletes outperform non-athletes in perceptual and cognitive domains,which suggests that cognitive skills trained in sports can transfer to performance on general cognitive abilities.However,studies investigating the effect of long-term motor skill training on brain activity focused on sports-specific tasks.Few studies have investigated brain changes between athletes and non-athletes when performing a transferred cognitive task.In the current study,multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging(MRI)were used to explore the neuroplastic changes in the brain in individuals with well-developed basketball skills.First,22 elite and 20 intermediate basketball players,and 23 non-athletes were asked to perform a multiple object tracking(MOT)task under three attentional load conditions(two,three,and four targets).The elite athletes displayed better tracking performance compared with the intermediate or non-athletes when tracking three or four targets.However,no significant difference was found between the intermediate athletes and the non-athletes.Further,no differences were observed among the three groups when tracking two targets.The results suggest that the effects of expertise in team ball sports could transfer to a non-sports-specific attention task.These transfer effects to general cognitive functions occur only in elite athletes with extensive training under higher attentional load.The second experiment aimed to investigate whether improved perceptualcognitive behavioral task performance in individuals with well-developed motor skills is associated with characteristic cortical activation and deactivation.Blood oxygenation-level dependent(BOLD)functional MRI(fMRI)was conducted in 23 athletes and 24 age-and education-matched non-athletes performing an MOT task with graded levels of attentional load(two,three,or four targets).Compared to non-athletes,athletes had better performance in the three-and four-target conditions of the MOT task.Less activation of the left frontal eye field(FEF)and bilateral anterior intraparietal sulcus(aIPS)and less deactivation in the bilateral medial superior frontal gyrus(mSFG)were observed in athletes compared to non-athletes.Importantly,as the attentional load was increased,differences in deactivation of the left middle temporal gyrus(MTG)between athletes and non-athletes became larger.Behavioral performance in the high attentional load condition correlated negatively with activation in the left FEF and right aIPS,and correlated positively with that in the mSFG and left MTG.Better performance in elite athletes may transfer from the sport domain to a general cognitive domain owing to higher neural efficiency,which may be represented by a bidirectional reduction phenomenon encompassing both reduced activation of areas associated with task execution and reduced deactivation of areas associated with irrelevant information processing.The third experiment was to examine differences in functional network connectivity between basketball players and non-athletes during an MOT task.Group independent component analysis(ICA)was used to analyze the fMRI data.Task fMRI data were decomposed into distinct spatial independent components(ICs)and associated time courses,and dorsal attention network(DAN)and default mode network(DMN)were selected for further analysis of functional connectivity.Results showed that,as compared to non-athletes,athletes had significantly higher scores on the MOT task and showed decreased functional network connectivity of regions within the DAN,suggesting that an automation process was being used to complete the task.Athletes also showed increased functional connectivity within DMN,indicative of effortless processing.Finally,we found that MOT performance was negatively correlated with functional connectivity of core areas in DAN,and positively correlated with functional connectivity of core areas in DMN.This study contributes to our understanding of the neural correlates underlying the transfer of enhanced abilities trained in sports to the general cognitive domain.In the forth experiment,resting-state functional connectivity was used to compare functional connectivity pattens in basketball players and non-athletes.Six regions of interest(ROI)were obtained from brain regions with significant differences in experiment theree.Results showed that,as compared to non-athletes,athletes had significantly higher functional connectivity between right superior parietal lobule/intraparietal sulcus and right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex,and between bilateral angulate cortex and left middle temporal gyrus/angular gyrus.We also found lower functional connectivity between right medial superior frontal gyrus and left cerebellum in athletes.Finally,we found that MOT performance was positively correlated with functional connectivity between right superior parietal lobule/intraparietal sulcus and right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex,and negatively correlated with functional connectivity between right medial superior frontal gyrus and left cerebellum.These results may be indicative of functional plastic changes in resting state due to long-term motor skill training.Finally,we used voxel-based morphometry to investigate training-induced gray matter changes in basketball players.We identified significantly increased gray matter volume in basketball players,especially in the bilateral parahippocampa gyrus/fusiform,bilateral postcentral gyrus/rolandic operculum/insula,and the left superior parietal lobule.No significant increase of grey matter volume was observed in non-ahtletes.Correlation analysis showed that MOT performance was positively correlated with grey matter volume in bilateral parahippocampa gyrus/fusiform,right postcentral gyrus/rolandic operculum/insula,and left superior parietal lobule.We speculate that the brain changes of the basketball players may reflect their extraordinary ability to estimate the direction of their movements,their speed of execution,and their identification of their own and surrounding objects' locations.In this study,behavioral measurement and multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging were used to explore the brain functional and structural plasticity of high-level basketball players through five experiments.The main conclusions were as follows:(1)motor skill training can improve non-sports-specific cognitive ability;(2)motor skill training is associated with functional changes in the brain,and motor experts possess higher neural efficiency during general cognitive tasks;(3)motor skills training is also associated with structural changes in the brain.