Can ERPs and neural oscillations be used to differentiate skilled and unskilled player performance in an ecologically valid sporting model?

Abstract

This study aimed to identify neural correlates of high performance in ecological valid, sporting tasks and quantify the differences between high skilled and low skilled players. To do this, Esports was chosen to be the sporting model to facilitate clean brain activity recordings whilst playing sport. After being separated based on skilled objective classification measure, players brain activity was then recorded as they completed a visuomotor psychophysics task and Esports aim-training tasks. Results indicated that skilled players display enhanced response in time-domain activity of occipital parietal electrodes, displaying increases to p100 and p300 peak amplitude. Peak decoding using MVPA, classifying brain activity between skilled or unskilled players, is achieved during the first 300ms of the response. Furthermore, skilled players show greater modulation to visual attention, gated by alpha oscillations localized to the visual cortex, and to cognitive workload, gated by theta oscillations localized to the frontal-midline. During complex, Esports tasks however, skilled players show an increase in frontal-midline theta showing the increased drive of ACC facilitating repeated execution of precise movements. Due to the nature of the model, applied implications are suggested for both coaches and athletes of all sports to utilize this research.