Influence of cognitive‐motor expertise on brain dynamics of anticipatory‐based outcome processing

Abstract

The ability to anticipate the outcome of others' actions is necessary for effective interactions in dynamic and uncertain environments and is a hallmark of the superior performer in reactive sport situations such as those that occur in table tennis, defensive volleyball play, or the fielding of a baseball. In the case of skilled cognitive-motor performance, predictive theories of action observation suggest that one predicts an opponent's actions through the processing of kinematic cues and the generation of a context-based representation of the movement. According to this view, experienced individuals excel in the anticipation of actions that are present in their own motor repertoire

Hand‐related action words impair action anticipation in expert table tennis players: Behavioral and neural evidence

“…In this study as in our previous studies using the same video materials (Lu et al, 2020;Wang, Lu, et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2018), novices as well as expert players predicted the trajectory of a ball with accuracy levels above chance for videos that were occluded at the moment of the serve and for videos showing the final ball trajectory. This accuracy higher than chance for novices may have reduced the contribution of task difficulty to group differences (Xu et al, 2016).…”

“…The ocular artifact–corrected EEG data were then segmented, starting 500 ms prior to the frame of racket‐ball contact onset to 1,000 ms after the onset for each experimental condition. The baseline was corrected using the −500 to 0 ms pre‐contact period (Lu et al., 2020). Epochs with signals that exceeded ±100 μV were rejected.…”

Preshooting Electroencephalographic Activity of Professional Shooters in a Competitive State

“…These findings suggest that the theta and alpha power of specific brain regions are related to the accuracy and professionalism of shooting. Lu et al found that a larger oscillatory activity in both the mid-frontal theta and parieto-occipital alpha in experts suggested an adaptive neural preparatory process with highly developed motor skills in complex tasks, characterized by high attentional demands, anticipation of uncertainty, and the integration of multiple visual cues [ 26 ]. This provides a theoretical support for us to study the neural activities in the process of shooting preparation for competitive tasks.…”

Expertise influences congruency monitoring during action observation at the motor level

“…In addition, the theta-band oscillation over the midfrontal cortex reflects conflict detection and resolution processes ( Cohen and Donner, 2013 ) and is modulated by an individual’s expertise during action observation. Brain dynamics during action anticipation was examined by presenting participants with edited videos of table tennis serve movement in a previous study ( Lu et al. , 2020 ).…”

“…In Lu’s study (2020) , the goal of the table tennis opponent’s serve action (i.e. serving the ball to a specific position) could be inferred from kinematic information.…”