Study Of Event-related Potentials Of Body-building Athletes' Motion Imagery

As the indispensable psychological activity, motion imagery plays a supporting role in forming the motor skills. Nerve-muscle Model suggested that motion imagery will cause nerve-muscle activities in sub-consciousness, and these movements are same as the real activities. And the correlation of motor skills level and definition of motion imagery is positive. That's to say when athletes do the images, nerve-muscle activities will appear. The existing research shows kinesthetic imagery is the main content in athletes'motion imagery, and visual imagery is the main content in novices'. So in order to provide more objective index about motion imagery, we investigated the neural basis of different imagery abilities of the athletes and the ordinary people.The eight college students, who had never participated in professional sports training, and four master class body-building athletes, were selected as subjects, used the 6000ms video of body-building Competition as stimulus, and recorded two groups'EEG when they're watching and recalling the video. The E-prime is our show software, and 32 leads ERPs System of Germany Brain Products is our collection and analysis system.ERPs when watching video:Firstly, we compared ERPs total average chart which from the point electrode of Oz, O1 and O2 at brain occipital. There're no significant differences between professional group's amplitude and non-professional group's. The primary visual processing areas mainly receive the nerve impulse from the eyes with the stimulation of light. The area respond to the physical characteristics of stimuli, resulting in the primary form of vision, do not display or do not have the function of encoding of information processing. Therefore, the difference of these two groups'activation about this area is not obvious.Then, we compared EEG which from two groups'electrode site of Pz, P3 and P4 at brain parietal. They all appeared P380. That's the amplitude of professional group is lower than non-professional group, and the activation of professional group's EEG is lower than non-professional group's significantly. Different proficiency to the video stimuli means different effort of senior visual processing and different input of psychological resources. In the first 400ms, because of the action video familiar to professional group, there are less input and lower activation. It's give an expression that athletes have the feature about saving of attention resources.Finally, we selected Fz, FC1 and FC2. Professional group has apparent and stable activation of this area. It says that the video is more meaningful to professional group than to others, and motor area participated in the work of encoding.ERPs when recalling:The professional group (M = 5766.47±1641.22ms) and non-professional group (M = 7262.61±2271.39ms) the reaction time were significantly different, professional group of shorter, faster reaction. Firstly, the FP1, FP2, F3 and F4 at the frontal pole and the frontal were selected. Although two groups all have the negative waves, the volatility of the professional group is always higher than non-professional group. The higher volatility of the professional group shows that athletes have control ability about conscious attention, focus on the image task easily, and are less affected with irrelevant stimuli. Rather than athletes, the lower activation of non-professional group tells us subjects are not familiar with the contents of video, and control ability about conscious attention is weak.Secondly, the channels FC1, FC2, and Cz at the motor function area were analyzed. From above we know professional group's motor cortex area activation is higher. While the activation of non-professional group is lower, its wave form fluctuates slightly close to the baseline. So we know kinesthetic imagery is the main content in athletes'motion imagery.Finally, the T7 and T8 at the temporal were analyzed. The higher ERPs amplitude of professional group shows athletes work harder to process and integrate memory imageries, take more meaningful image contents. It reveals the truth the activation of T7, which is at the left temporal, higher than the right temporal site T8. It's in accordance with the study of temporal lobe theory—remembering experiences which have rich contents are more activation in the left temporal lobe.In conclusion, when watching, professional group take the video less worthy of note, but they can keep more stable condition of activation. That's to say exercise experiences of the athletes have a significant effect to information input and process, and they take positive process when imputing. When recalling, the higher condition of activation of athletes'prefrontal cortex, motor area and left temporal confirm kinesthetic imagery is the main content in their motion imagery, and provide objective index of ERPs to Nerve-muscle Model.