New Virtual Tool Can Train Athlete Brains to React 53 Percent Faster, Improve Their Game
November 18, 2008
Boxing champion Antonin Décarie in automatic virtual environment cave developed at Universite de Montreal. Credit: Claude Lacasse
All great athletes know that in order to perform well, they can't just depend on their physical capabilities. Speed and efficiency in decision-making are just as essential. Two researchers from the School of Optometry of the Université de Montréal have discovered how to train the brain of athletes to improve their overall athletic performance.
Professor Jocelyn Faubert and postdoctoral student David Tinjust, put a dozen soccer, tennis and hockey players through multiple object-tracking exercises. The athletes' capacity to absorb a lot of information simultaneously and manage it efficiently increased on average by 53 percent.
In one of these exercises, subjects in the automatic virtual environment cave were asked to follow the increasingly rapid movements of a series of balls and identify those that quickly changed colour. After each training session, which lasted about an hour, results were recorded and athletes could note their progress. "It's like physical training, but for the brain," says Faubert.
The approach has already gained great popularity among athletes, from star goalie Kim St-Pierre to North American boxing champion Anthonin Décarie.
"In their normal workouts, athletes regularly evaluate their physical performance, but until now there has been no tool that could rate their cognitive performance," says Faubert. "If an athlete feels both physically and mentally ready, that can only have a positive influence on his or her performance."
Originally, the tool was used to see how elderly people or those with vision problems would behave in a virtual environment. For example, how could subjects work their way through a crowd, traffic or get on an escalator? The researchers then decided to adapt the process to top athletes and transfer the scientific knowledge to virtual training tools.
Athletes could wear a virtual helmet that would allow them to train anywhere. They could also wear cybernetic gloves and glasses and, while viewing superimposed images, they could practise complex movements with a fictitious opponent. Every movement of the hand, foot and head would be recorded with sensors.
Source: University of Montreal
-
For stars, high-tech gaffes hard to hide
Nov 28, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Exercising judgment: The psychology of fitness
Jan 09, 2008 |
4.7 / 5 (7) |
0
-
CyberWalk - Unconstrained Walking in Virtual Worlds
Apr 27, 2005 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Swimming goes high tech with EPFL-developed inertial systems
Feb 01, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Remote control pushed aside by gesture-sensitive devices
Jan 25, 2012 |
4.5 / 5 (4) |
0
-
Engineers build first sub-10-nm carbon nanotube transistor
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (31) |
30
-
Something old, something new: Evolution and the structural divergence of duplicate genes
Jan 31, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (7) |
1
-
The hidden nanoworld of ice crystals: Revealing the dynamic behavior of quasi-liquid layers
Jan 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
1
-
Stock market network reveals investor clustering
Jan 27, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (23) |
8
-
Of microchemistry and molecules: Electronic microfluidic device synthesizes biocompatible probes
Jan 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
-
Is Everyday Technology Killing Us?
Feb 08, 2012
-
Exercise and weight loss
Feb 08, 2012
-
Why do we have head aches? Our brains can't feel anything.
Feb 07, 2012
-
"The end of diseases" by David Agus, interview from Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Feb 04, 2012
-
Oncolytic adenovirus
Feb 04, 2012
-
Nutrition label stuffs and diets
Feb 02, 2012
- More from Physics Forums - Medical Sciences
More news stories
Complex wiring of the nervous system may rely on a just a handful of genes and proteins
Researchers at the Salk Institute have discovered a startling feature of early brain development that helps to explain how complex neuron wiring patterns are programmed using just a handful of critical genes. ...
7 hours ago |
4.9 / 5 (9) |
0
|
Both maternal and paternal age linked to autism
Older maternal and paternal age are jointly associated with having a child with autism, according to a recently published study led by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
12 hours ago |
4.3 / 5 (3) |
0
|
New understanding of DNA repair could eventually lead to cancer therapy
A research group in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta is hoping its latest discovery could one day be used to develop new therapies that target certain types of cancers.
11 hours ago |
4.8 / 5 (5) |
0
|
Curry spice component may help slow prostate tumor growth
Curcumin, an active component of the Indian curry spice turmeric, may help slow down tumor growth in castration-resistant prostate cancer patients on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), a study from researchers ...
13 hours ago |
4.4 / 5 (8) |
0
|
Team isolates nerve cells involved in storing long term memory and gene proteins associated with them
(Medical Xpress) -- A research team in Taiwan has succeeded in isolating two nerve cells in fruit fly brains that are believed to be the major players in allowing for the formation of long term memories. Furthermore, ...
Anonymous knocks CIA website offline (Update)
The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.
Google users warned of threat to smartphone wallets
Users of Google smartphone wallets were being warned on Friday that there is a way to crack pass codes intended to thwart thieves from going on illicit shopping sprees.
New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission
Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. Theyre a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel such as an optical fiber o ...
Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago
(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...
The power of estrogen -- male snakes attract other males
A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest ...
New power source discovered
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and RMIT University have made a breakthrough in energy storage and power generation.
Nov 18, 2008
Rank: 4 / 5 (1)
Nov 18, 2008
Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
I wanna use it to play Tekken.