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Updated: Jun 15, 2025
Transferring Cognitive Tasks Between Brain Imaging Modalities: Implications for Task Design and Results Interpretation in fMRI Studies
Published on: September 22, 2014
Olympic team rowers and team swimmers show altered functional brain activation during working memory and action
Zai-Fu Yao1, Ilja G Sligte2, Richard Ridderinkhof2
1College of Education, 521 Nanda Road, East Dist, Nanda Campus, National Tsing Hua University, 30013, Hsinchu City, Taiwan; Research Center for Education and Mind Sciences, 521 Nanda Road, East Dist, Nanda Campus, National Tsing Hua University, 30013, Hsinchu City, Taiwan; Department of Kinesiology, 521 Nanda Road, East Dist, Nanda Campus, National Tsing Hua University, 30013, Hsinchu City, Taiwan; Basic Psychology Group, Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, 521 Nanda Road, East Dist, Nanda Campus, National Tsing Hua University, 30013, Hsinchu City, Taiwan.
Background:
High-level expertise in team-sports is associated with superior performance on executive functions (EFs) such as working memory (WM) and action inhibition, and with altered activation of brain areas related to these EFs. In most such studies, athletes were sampled from the domain of dynamic (i.e., open-skill) team-sports (e.g., soccer players). Whether static (i.e., closed-skill) team-sports athletes (e.g., rowers and synchronized swimmers) also show superior EFs performance and differential EF-related functional brain activation remains unknown.
Methods:
We recruited 14 elite closed-skill athletes, all national champions, and internationally competitive in various rowing disciplines, as well as 14 controls matched on gender, age, and education, and had them perform working memory and action inhibition (stop-signal) tasks during fMRI scanning.
Results:
Group differences in performance in either task failed to obtain statistical significance, although athletes showed a numerical trend toward higher WM capacity than controls. Importantly, task-related BOLD responses suggested that Olympic closed-skill team athletes show stronger recruitment of brain areas that emphasize relatively stable task demands and weaker engagement of brain areas that emphasize rapidly changing demands imposed by extraneous stimulation.
Conclusion:
Functional brain imaging data suggest elite closed-skill athletes may employ different cognitive strategies.
