Scientists observe intriguing brain activity patterns in elite athletes

A recent study published in Neuropsychologia suggests that Olympic-level athletes in closed-skill sports use different brain strategies compared to non-athletes during tasks involving working memory and action inhibition. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers found that these athletes showed greater activation in brain regions associated with stable, repetitive task demands, while non-athletes showed stronger activity in areas involved in adjusting to rapidly changing situations.

The researchers were interested in how different types of sports training might affect the brain’s executive functions. Executive functions refer to the cognitive processes that help us manage and regulate behavior to achieve goals, including working memory and action inhibition. Working memory is responsible for temporarily holding and managing information needed to complete tasks, while action inhibition allows us to stop habitual responses when necessary.

Previous studies have shown that athletes in dynamic, unpredictable sports—such as soccer or volleyball—tend to outperform non-athletes in tasks involving action inhibition. These sports, called “open-skill” sports, require athletes to make quick decisions in fast-changing environments.

In contrast, closed-skill sports like rowing or synchronized swimming take place in stable, predictable settings. Athletes in these sports follow fixed routines with less need for constant adaptation. Although it’s well-documented that open-skill athletes excel at tasks requiring rapid responses, less is known about how closed-skill athletes perform on similar tasks. The new study aimed to fill that gap by comparing the brain activity of Olympic-level closed-skill athletes to non-athletes during working memory and action inhibition tasks.

“I was a competitive swimmer in Taiwan and spent years training rigorously, often for two to three hours a day, perfecting drills and honing my underwater techniques. My personal experience sparked an interest in understanding how physical training could be optimized,” said study author Zai-Fu Yao, an assistant professor in the Interdisciplinary Program at the College of Education at National Tsing Hua University.

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“During my undergraduate studies, I came across the book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J. Ratey, MD, which intrigued me further about the relationship between physical performance and brain function. I started exploring how the brain, through processes like plasticity, adapts to facilitate motor skill improvement and memory retention. This led me to the field of cognitive neuroscience, where tools like brain imaging reveal the intricate connections between brain activity and behavior.”

“As I delved deeper into cognitive neuroscience, I discovered the concept of brain plasticity—how the brain’s structure and function are shaped by experience,” Yao explained. “This led me to wonder: if Olympic athletes undergo such extensive, high-level training, how does it impact their brain circuitry? Olympic athletes, with their unparalleled levels of experience and specialized training, seemed like the perfect group to study.”

“Professor Vincent Walsh’s commentary in Current Biology further reinforced this idea, suggesting that sports might represent the brain’s most complex challenge. Studying elite athletes offers a unique opportunity to explore the relationship between brain and behavior in those performing at the highest levels of human ability.”

For their study, the researchers recruited 14 elite closed-skill athletes, all national champions or international competitors in various rowing disciplines, and 14 non-athlete controls matched for gender, age, and education. All participants underwent fMRI brain scanning while completing two tasks: a working memory task and an action inhibition task.

In the working memory task, participants viewed a set of rectangles on a screen. After a brief delay, they were asked whether one of the rectangles had changed its orientation. This task was designed to test visuospatial working memory, which is the ability to remember and manipulate visual information in space. Participants’ accuracy was recorded, and the brain regions activated during the task were analyzed using fMRI.

The action inhibition task required participants to respond as quickly as possible to a stimulus—such as determining whether a face was male or female—unless a stop signal was presented. If the stop signal appeared, participants had to inhibit their response. This task tested their ability to override an automatic response when cued.

Interestingly, the behavioral results—the actual task performance—showed no significant differences between the athletes and non-athletes in either working memory or action inhibition. Both groups performed similarly in terms of accuracy and reaction times. However, when researchers looked at brain activity, a more complex picture emerged.

During the working memory task, the closed-skill athletes showed stronger activation in brain areas involved in maintaining steady, repetitive information, such as the fusiform gyrus and superior parietal lobule. These regions are responsible for encoding and managing visual and spatial information. Non-athletes, on the other hand, showed more activity in the frontal regions of the brain, which are associated with monitoring and adjusting to changing situations.

In the action inhibition task, a similar pattern was observed. The athletes had stronger activation in the posterior cingulate cortex and the precuneus, regions linked to internally focused tasks and maintaining attention. Non-athletes showed stronger activation in frontal areas associated with stopping an action, which suggests that they were more engaged in managing sudden changes.

“I was initially surprised by the distinct neural circuitry differences between the Olympic athletes and the control group, even though we didn’t observe significant behavioral differences,” Yao told PsyPost. “I had expected the brain activity to be more similar given the lack of clear performance differences. However, despite the small sample size, we did notice trends where the athletes seemed to perform slightly better, suggesting that with a larger sample, those trends might become statistically significant.”

“What also stood out to me was that while many behavioral studies on athletes consistently show differences in action control and inhibition tasks, we found that working memory—a cognitive skill not directly tied to their specific sports—was linked to different patterns of brain activation. This suggests that even though their sport may not rely heavily on working memory, years of systematic training still impact how their brains handle cognitive tasks.”

These findings suggest that closed-skill athletes may develop specialized brain strategies that focus on the stable, predictable aspects of their sport. Their brains appear to emphasize steady attention and coordination over rapid adjustments to changing conditions. In contrast, non-athletes—who are not trained to handle highly repetitive tasks—may rely more on areas of the brain involved in adapting to new or sudden challenges.

“Our research shows that Olympic athletes, like rowers and synchronized swimmers, have unique brain patterns when they use memory or stop themselves from acting quickly,” Yao explained. “Even though they didn’t perform much differently from non-athletes in the tasks, their brains were working in different ways, likely due to years of intense training. This highlights how physical training not only strengthens the body but also changes how the brain operates, making athletes more efficient in handling certain challenges. The big takeaway is that physical training doesn’t just strengthen muscles—it also changes the brain, influencing how we think, plan, and control actions!”

But the study, like all research, has some limitations.

“The small sample size is a big limitation, but it’s tough to avoid when studying such a rare group like Olympic athletes,” Yao noted. “We did our best to match controls in terms of age, education, and general physical activity, but a larger sample would give clearer results. Another thing to consider is that we only looked at a few cognitive tasks, and athletes might show differences in other areas that we didn’t measure.”

“Also, while fMRI tracks brain activity through blood flow, it would be useful to include other factors like heart rate and fitness levels since these could affect the brain’s response. Exploring more types of sports, like comparing open-skill (dynamic) and closed-skill (static) athletes, would also give us a better idea of how different training shapes the brain.”

The study raises questions about the long-term impact of closed-skill sports on brain function. While this research focused on brain activity during specific tasks, it would be interesting to explore how this heightened activity in certain brain regions affects athletes’ performance in real-world settings, both during and after their athletic careers. Longitudinal studies tracking athletes over time, including after retirement, would be valuable in understanding how these cognitive adaptations evolve and whether they persist or change.

“I think it would be really exciting to build a brain imaging and data bank for athletes,” Yao told PsyPost. “My goal is to track young athletes over time, collecting information about their brain activity, genetics, and how their bodies change—both during training and when they’re competing on big stages like the Olympics. Using real-time cameras and tech to monitor their vital signs during competitions and linking that to their actual performance would be amazing.”

“Even more, I’d love to follow these athletes into retirement to see how their brains change after they stop competing. These are people who have pushed human performance to the limit, and studying them could tell us a lot about how their brains age. We know that exercise can help prevent cognitive decline, but we don’t know how that plays out for elite athletes once they stop training. Do they age differently? Do they keep their cognitive edge? Or do they face bigger challenges? These are fascinating questions that would take a lot of time, effort, and collaboration—but it’s a dream project that could offer huge insights.”

The study, “Olympic team rowers and team swimmers show altered functional brain activation during working memory and action inhibition,” was authored by Zai-Fu Yao, Ilja G. Sligte, and Richard Ridderinkhof.