Cognitive performance in youth football players: Evidence from spectral and temporal EEG analyses

This study investigated behavioral and electrophysiological indices of cognitive performance in elite youth football players across mid-adolescence, interpreted through the Neural Efficiency Hypothesis (NEH) as a conceptual lens. Participants completed four cognitive tasks, the Tower of Hanoi (ToH), N-back, Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), and Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded to extract power spectral density (PSD) and event-related potentials (ERPs). Behavioral results revealed no significant differences between younger and older players, suggesting relative stability in executive, attentional, and decision-making abilities during this developmental window. PSD analyses showed consistent region-specific modulations across tasks, including reduced frontal power and lower parietal beta and gamma activity, with the SART eliciting relatively higher alpha, beta, and gamma power consistent with its sustained attention demands. ERP amplitudes were largely stable across groups, with task- and lobe-specific effects such as enhanced occipital P2 activity during the IGT and reduced occipital N2/P2 amplitudes during the SART, reflecting differentiated neural recruitment for evaluative and inhibitory control processes. Brain-behavior correlations were modest but task-relevant. Overall, cortical activation patterns were strongly task-dependent yet descriptively stable across mid-adolescence. These findings provide a comprehensive baseline characterization of neural and cognitive function in elite youth athletes, informing future large-scale investigations of neural efficiency and developmental trajectories in sport contexts.