Triathletes are experts in self-regulating physical activity – But what about self-regulating neural activity?

We all know that triathlon is an endurance multisport race consisting of swimming, cycling, and running over various distances. Triathletes compete for fastest overall completion time, racing each segment sequentially with the time transitioning between the disciplines included.

Different theories and empirical findings support the assumption that athletes have self-regulation abilities superior to people who do not exercise. Regular physical activity is associated with enhanced cognitive control functions, such as executive functions, including attention, task switching, or inhibition. The effects of physical activity on cognitive control appear to be underpinned by the effects of physical activity on brain structure.

We focus on triathletes since there is evidence that metacognitive processes play an essential role in effective cognitive control in elite endurance athletes (Brick et al., 2015). Successful endurance activities require a high amount of monitoring bodily sensations (e.g., pain, muscular fatigue) and controlling them by diverting attentional focus from pain sensations to maintain performance (Brick et al., 2015). Therefore, triathletes need to focus their attention non-judgmentally on the endurance task while ignoring task-irrelevant thoughts. This mental strategy is similar to successful mental strategies used to increase SMR during NF training (Kober et al., 2013).

This study which led by Kober et al. (Sep. 2022) and published in Biological Psychology, investigated MRI differences between triathlon ahtletes and controls after a 45-min neurofeedback training session. They provide new evidence regarding self-regulation abilities of people who exercise regularly and might impact the practical application of neurofeedback.

Highlights

• Triathletes show a superior ability to regulate neural activity compared to controls.
• Triathletes show larger gray and white matter in frontal areas compared to controls.
• Triathletes show differences in brain structures associated with cognitive control.
• Real feedback led to better neurofeedback performance compared to sham feedback.
• Triathletes and controls were able to voluntarily upregulate their SMR activity during neurofeedback when receiving real feedback; but, triathletes showed a stronger increase in SMR activity in the second half of the training compared to controls, suggesting that triathletes are able to self-regulate their own brain activity over a longer period of time.

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