To triumph over competition, athletes must be the fastest, strongest and the nimblest contenders. Record-breakers must push even further, surpassing the limits of human capability.
But besides their physical prowess, athletes harness a unique set of mental skills that allows them to succeed in their respective disciplines. Numerous studies have shown that athletes' brains differ from non-athletes' brains.
Visual cue processing
The ability to quickly soak up visual information and make decisions accordingly is a crucial skill for athletes, especially those who play team sports. A 2013 study in the journal Scientific Reports revealed that professional ice hockey, soccer and rugby players are better visual learners than people with lower-level abilities in the same sports.
A football match between all-Brazilian Corinthians and Red Bull Bragantino. Footballers are trained to divide their attention and dynamically switch between different ways of thinking | AFP
The pros were compared with 'elite amateurs'― in this case, US college athletes and players from a European Olympic sport-training centre. They were also compared with non-athlete university students. Compared with both groups, professional athletes performed better, and improved faster, on a task that tested their ability to focus on and track objects moving across a screen. In other words, their brains are more skilled at processing “dynamic visual scenes”, or the world moving around them, the study authors found. The elite amateurs were also better at this than the non-athletes.
This knowledge could be used to enhance an athlete's training and determine the best time for them to return to their sport following an injury, said Jocelyn Faubert, author of the 2013 Scientific Reports study and a professor at the University of Montreal School of Optometry. For example, assessing how efficiently an athlete can process visual information and not make judgment errors could prevent them from coming back too early and putting themselves in danger, he said.
Muscle memory
Acrobatic athletes, such as divers and gymnasts, need to be exceptionally good at performing sequences of movements without consciously thinking about it― a phenomenon colloquially known as 'muscle memory'.
Pushing boundaries: Gymnast Simone Biles on the beam during training | Reuters
A 2023 study in The Journal of Neuroscience revealed that the brain plans and coordinates repetitive movements like those performed by athletes and trained musicians by quickly “zipping” and “unzipping” crucial information about them. At first, the sequence and timing of the steps are programmed separately in the brain, but with training, these individual elements become seamlessly integrated into one burst of coordinated brain activity. This process involves a network of neurons in the cortex―the outer layer of the brain―that regulate movement.
Predictions
In baseball, a batter must make quick and accurate predictions about the fate of each ball the pitcher throws. For example, will it enter the strike zone, and how fast will it come at them?
It turns out that, depending on what the batter predicts, their brain activity changes. Specifically, neurons within a region of the brain called the left ventral extrastriate cortex vary in these scenarios, according to a 2022 study in the journal Cerebral Cortex. This is likely because of batters' unique ability to relate visual cues about a pitcher's movements to the potential path of the ball, the authors said.
Structurally speaking, research has also shown that professional divers, for example, have a thicker superior temporal sulcus (STS) than novices. The STS is a region of the brain that plays an important role in the perception of movement of other living things and it also helps decipher the intentions behind those movements. This makes sense in the context of diving, as these athletes often learn by watching other divers' performances, the authors said. And, of course, this is true of many sports.
Balance
Acrobatic athletes, such as gymnasts, have remarkable proprioceptive skills, or the ability to sense where their bodies are in space. An intricate network of neurons in the cerebellum, a region at the base of the brain, enables these athletes to rapidly course-correct in the air or keep their balance on an apparatus when a trick doesn't go according to plan.
If this safety net malfunctions―as famously happened to US gymnast Simone Biles when she got the “twisties” during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics―it can cause these athletes to lose control of their bodies in midair, with potentially deadly consequences.
Focus and attention
Olga Kotelko had strikingly intact white matter, comparable to that of less-active women who were more than three decades younger | Getty Images
Athletes must be able to appropriately divide their attention and dynamically switch between different ways of thinking. For example, during a match, a soccer player who is dribbling the ball one way may need to quickly switch direction if approached by a player from the opposing team.
The cognitive skills needed to switch your attention also extend to tasks in daily life, such as listening to a podcast while cleaning the house. A 2022 study in the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology provided evidence that athletes are much better at this than nonathletes are.
Notably, athletes trained in team sports that require aerobic or high-intensity interval training had particularly enhanced skills in this area. They stood out for their cognitive flexibility and their ability to appropriately allocate attention, researchers found.
At this point, it is unknown why athletic training influences cognition this way, said Art Kramer, co-author of the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology study and director of the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health at Northeastern University in Boston. To find out, you would need to do a long-term study or a randomised controlled trial in which some kids are put into athletic training while others are not and then monitor them over time. But such a study would be unethical because some kids would be completely denied access to sports, he said.
Resistance to ageing in the brain
The cognitive benefits of athletic training may also extend throughout life. Perhaps no one exemplified this better than the late Canadian track-and-field athlete Olga Kotelko, who held more than 30 world records.
Before she died in 2014 at age 95, Kramer and colleagues studied her brain in the lab.
As we age, the 'white matter'―the connections between neurons in different regions of the brain―deteriorates. However, the team found that Olga―despite being in her mid-90s at the time―had strikingly intact white matter, comparable to that of less-active women who were more than three decades younger.
Olga was also quicker at responding to cognitive tasks than other nonagenarians who were tested in a separate, independent study, and she had better memory than them, the team found.
Of course, general conclusions cannot be drawn from one athlete. However, as the team said, there is “only one Olga”. For this reason, she afforded scientists a unique glimpse into the long-term impacts of athletic training on the brain.
It is important to note though that not every elite-level sport is associated with people surviving into old age, or staying sharp into their 90s like Olga did. Scientists are still figuring out which sports bring about such benefits and which don't.
Training of the next generation
Looking forward, encouraging brain training in athletes from an early age may lead to even more sporting gains.
“We're at a point with training athletes, in particular, where the human body can't really go much further, but there's so much more we can actually do with cognition,” said Kylie Steel, a sports scientist at Western Sydney University in Australia.
In an article in The Conversation, Steel and colleagues argued that coaches should focus more on training athletes' cognitive abilities, such as their memory and decision-making skills. This is especially important during the earlier years of life, when the brain is more malleable, they posited.
In a ball sport like soccer, this training could involve asking players to use their nondominant foot to kick the ball. “If we can try and encourage a lot more training associated with that [cognitive enhancement]―particularly in the junior years―by the time they get to those later years, tactically, they'll be more skilled,” Steel proposed.