Periodic and aperiodic components during shooting preparation and pre-/post-task resting states: a spectral...

Conventional band-power analysis conflates the periodic and aperiodic components of neural activity. The present study applied spectral parameterization to separate these two components in order to characterize the neural activity of the shooting preparation phase and of the pre- and post-task resting states. A total of 28 proficient shooters were ultimately included and completed shooting tasks under three conditions-Hostage-Rescue, Long-Range, and Close-Range. EEG signals were recorded during the preparation phase of each condition and during the eyes-closed resting states before and after the task. Spectral parameterization was employed to extract the aperiodic exponent, the aperiodic offset, and the periodic oscillatory power within the theta, alpha, and beta bands, as well as their summed power. Exploratory analyses were subsequently conducted from three perspectives: the shooting preparation phase across different conditions, comparisons between high- and low-performance groups, and pre- versus post-task resting states, with resting-state functional connectivity additionally examined. The spectral-parameterization metrics revealed no significant differences among the three conditions at the whole-brain or electrode level. After grouping trials by shooting performance metrics, differences that were condition-dependent and metric-specific emerged. Compared with the pre-task resting-state, the aperiodic exponent of the post-task resting state was significantly lower, whereas the periodic oscillatory power of the theta band was significantly higher. Spectral parameterization can separate the periodic and aperiodic components of shooting EEG. In this study, no significant neural differences were detected among the preparation phases of the three conditions, and the differences obtained by grouping trials according to performance were condition-dependent and metric-specific, remaining exploratory findings that await validation. Changes in the post-task resting-state EEG suggest that brain activity did not recover immediately, possibly in relation to post-task changes in excitatory dominance and mental fatigue.