Slashdot Mirror
Soccer Superstar Plays With Very Low Brain Activity
jones_supa (887896) writes "Brazilian superstar Neymar's (Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior) brain activity while dancing past opponents is less than 10 per cent the level of amateur players, suggesting he plays as if on "auto-pilot", according to Japanese neurologists Eiichi Naito and Satoshi Hirose. The findings were published in the Swiss journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience following a series of motor skills tests carried out on the 22-year-old Neymar and several other athletes in Barcelona in February this year. Three Spanish second-division footballers and two top-level swimmers were also subjected to the same tests. Researcher Naito told Japan's Mainichi Shimbun newspaper: "Reduced brain activity means less burden which allows [the player] to perform many complex movements at once. We believe this gives him the ability to execute his various shimmies." In the research paper Naito concluded that the test results "provide valuable evidence that the football brain of Neymar recruits very limited neural resources in the motor-cortical foot regions during foot movements"."
I'm only an armchair cognitive scientist, but my interpretation of this result is that it shows how an expert player has integrated the knowledge of how to play as a skill. The player no longer has to think through each situation and plan a response, the brain recognizes patterns and produces a response automatically. This allows for a higher-level of play because the player's conscious mind is free to act at a higher level, producing better tactics and strategy.
I guess that's a sexier headline than "Expert Soccer Player Has Good Muscle Memory", and it does tie into that recent bit of excitement down in Brazil, but otherwise I'm not seeing anything in the summary that comes as a surprise... Is it that part where they quantify the differences in neural activity between "expert" and "amateur"?
Log in or piss off.
Malcolm Gladwell has an interesting take with his 10,000 hour theory. If you are passionate about something and you live and breath it for long enough, you obviously get good at it. Most people are not quite so fanatical - but this is a choice, meaning they could be if they wanted to. And what is intelligence anyway? How do you quantify it such that one person is born with more of it than someone else?
Some people turn of thought when in a fight. It can be a learned talent and it makes ones response much faster and blows delivered much more accurate. The catch is that when in that state extra violence can be delivered as the person is on auto pilot. Courts have not dealt with this as so few people who do this can verbalize what was going on. I'm not so certain that the true capacity to form intent exists in a person in that state of mind. Even advanced chess players can get into a similar state in which they can calculate chess moves like a machine but are sort of not human for a bit after the game is over. A portion of their minds has been diverted elsewhere and it makes them sort of silly emotionally.
So he plays using "automatic" skill. Every target shooter knows that place. Every cook flipping an egg knows that place. Hell, everybody knows that place. When you're first learning to drive, making a left-hand turn or backing out of a parking place requires lots of thought about HOW to do it. After long practice, you don't think about it, you simply do it. The trick, in soccer, or shooting, or writing code, anything that requires sustained performance, is to stay in that place.
You don't need much brain for running around kicking a ball.
You're absolutely correct in a very zen kind of way. In order to be in the zone, or flow, you still need to make decisions such as "lean left, kick right", or "stop short, pass forward", but they key is to not let those minor mental decisions get in the way of your physical ability to execute. Some people are born with the ability to simply "do it", other may take years of practice to learn to let go of the process, but in the end it's all about realizing your potential without anxiety about the outcome.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
If you've ever seen them being interviewed on TV - either before or after a match, even that singular result will be a surprise.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
That's a common misperception of what Gladwell write. His actual formulation was 10,000 hours + talent + opportunity.
I think the idea is that all this guy's practice has streamlined his mental footballing process. If you tried to go kick a ball around in a stadium full of screaming fans while trying to avoid all the other people trying to kick the ball, you'd use tons of brain power. I suspect I'd use so much I'd pass out. But this guy's trained himself to filter out all the superfluous information and do the work as naturally as I type these words.
Doesn't take a lot of brain power to fake an ankle injury
i think women's beach volleyball is "the beautiful sport"
I think the idea is that all this guy's practice has streamlined his mental footballing process.
Exactly. He's been pushing one single button for most of his life.
He got really good at pushing that button. He can push it in his sleep.
I suspect I'd use so much I'd pass out.
LOL! No.
Unless you regularly faint whenever you encounter a problem as mentally challenging as deciding if the traffic light is red or green.
Ever played chess and fainted? If not... you're probably safe from "stadium induced fainting".
The article is just click-whoring for the last bits of interest in that recent ball kicking event.
Which was once again won by Germans as I hear.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
News flash: basement-bound nerds think being a world champion-caliber athlete is easy. Film at 11.
Let go of your hatred of the dumb-ass jocks who got laid in high school but could never compete on a professional level, and consider that it might not be so brainless to be a world-class athlete. All this study says is that the very best athletes have learned to do it on autopilot, but for everyone else a lot of thinking is involved.
Geeks can actually simulate the experience to a certain degree, given that some modern video games have evolved to a high degree of realism. Play "Madden NFL" on an expert difficulty level, and you'll see just how hard it can be for a NFL quarterback to try to read the movements of 11 defensive players simultaneously and pick the best route to throw the ball... even when you don't actually have to have the arm strength to throw it. Play "MLB the Show" on an expert level and you'll see how hard it can be to react in a tiny fraction of a second whether you're swinging at a 100 mph straight-ahead fastball, an 85 mph changeup that looks just like a fastball, a 90 mph slider that stars out straight but breaks away from the pitcher's arm, or a 70 mph knuckleball that just floats all over the fucking place.
TL;DR - (some) video games these days are good enough to replicate just how hard professional level athletics are, even without the actual physical exertion. Please don't dismiss athletics as brainless if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
"95% of all Slashdot