C3Logix assessment of neuropsychological performance in athletes and nonathletes

Physical activity (PA) has been shown to enhance physical health, mental health, and cognitive functioning. Adult and older adult research shows that PA positively influences neuropsychological performance and protects against cognitive decline. This study investigated neuropsychological performance in uninjured athletes and nonathletes using an iPad-based neuropsychological battery called C3Logix. Since literature suggests that PA enhances cognitive functioning, athletes may perform better on neurocognitive measures than nonathletes due to athletes' assumed higher level of PA. We hypothesized that collegiate athletes would outperform nonathletes on all cognitive tasks. Ninety-five athletes and 92 nonathletes completed the neurocognitive assessments and results showed that athletes outperformed nonathletes on reaction time tasks, but not in other cognitive domains. The implications of this study included extending the work of previous research using C3Logix and added to our understanding of a possible difference in reaction time between healthy collegiate athletes and nonathletes.