Fast Or Slow, It Was Already Decided Before ‘Go’

Research suggests that runners’ neural activity just before the start of a race can predict miniscule variations in reaction times.

AsianScientist (Jun. 16, 2016) – How quickly you react to the start of a race has already been decided even before the starting gun, according to a Japanese study.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo and Hokkaido University have shown that pre-movement neural activity can predict minuscule variations in reaction times. Their results, published in Scientific Reports, could lead to the development of training methods to achieve less variable motor performance in sports activities.

No sprinter can achieve a perfect start to every race. Our reactions are inevitably unpredictable even when performing the same movement over and over again. Recent neurophysiological research in monkeys suggests that neural activity during the motor preparation stage before movement is one possible source of such variability; however, it was still unclear whether neural signals in human brains can be measured to predict this variability in reaction time.

“Professional sprinters practice their starts thousands or tens of thousands of times to improve their reactions to the gun and improve their times by a hundredth of a second,” said Dr. Ryu Ohata, a research fellow from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, who was the first author of the study. “This implies that such repeated practice is thought to be the best practice for suppressing variability in reaction times.”

With the help of magnetoencephalography (MEG), which can be used to record human brain activity with a high temporal resolution of milliseconds, Ohata and colleagues successfully predicted whether human subjects would respond with a short or long reaction time before movement.

Using a machine learning algorithm to analyze activity in the pre-motor cortex relating to motor function preparation, they succeeded in predicting variability in reaction times about 0.5 seconds before the ‘Go’ signal.

Their work indicates that the preparatory state of the brain has great impact on subsequent physical performance. Therefore, if we can train our brains to produce an appropriate preparatory state, it may be possible to perform movements constantly with less variability, or prevent delayed reactions that may lead to serious human errors such as traffic accidents, the researchers say.

“Our results are a major contribution to developing a real-time system to monitor the preparatory state of the brain. Developing such a monitoring system is expected to lead to effective training methods which enable athletes to make the best start with fewer practice sessions,” Ohata said.



The article can be found at: Ohata et al. (2016) Single-Trial Prediction of Reaction Time Variability from MEG Brain Activity.

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Source: University of Tokyo; Photo: Pixabay.
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