Motor skill acquisition influences brain responsiveness in sprinters

Contingent negative variation (CNV) and reaction time were examined in four groups of eight young adult men: controls, witnesses, students in physical and athletic education, and sprinters. Subjects, except the control group, were asked to detect and respond quickly by pressing a button in the following experimental conditions: 1) simple auditory stimuli, 2) paired auditory stimuli, 3) mixed simple and paired auditory stimuli.- A higher CNV voltage and lower reaction time and reaction time variability were obvious in students in physical and athletic education and sprinters, compared to controls and witnesses. In all the groups CNV amplitude declined in the third condition, reaction time and reaction time variability augmented from condition 1 to condition 3. These results show that relationships couple attentiveness and motor activation processes. The motor activation differed for simple starter and presignalled starter conditions (conditions 1 and 2). An increase of discrimination difficulty diminished the performance.