WRITTEN: June 22, 2022
Hello,
For my first official post, I want to analyze one of the only neuro and fencing-related studies that are available online. If you have not checked out the background for my research and what I intend to do with this blog please go to the “about” page. Anyway, the following study is a good basis for how I can develop my project. I plan to summarize and break it down into the; purpose, background, methods/procedure, results, and implications for my project. The article was titled; Neural Correlates of Attentional and Executive Processing in Middle-Age Fencers and the authors were TADDEI, FRANCESCO; BULTRINI, ALESSANDRO; SPINELLI, DONATELLA, ; DI RUSSO, FRANCESCO.
Background:
Cognitive functions such as motor speed, reasoning tasks, and memory are known to decline with age. Cognitive decline leads to less activity in the frontal lobes and less inhibitory control – the control people have over impulsive responses. This is key to my study because my purpose is to promote fencing as a counteractor to cognitive decline. Additionally, the study brings up accuracy and speed which are two major factors of fencing that participants may be better at. The background states that older adults may be slower at performing a task but still have the same accuracy as younger adults. There is a mention of accuracy being increased or decreased amongst older adults “depending on the task” which is significant because I want to test accuracy while producing an accurate result with my experiment. Thus, I must observe the tasks used within this project as they may serve as a basis for my project.
The primary reason for slower processing in older adults is a “defective inhibition” which is when separate stimuli distract an individual from doing a task resulting in a slower reaction time. Another major component of the background of this study was the claim that aerobic activity had a positive effect on all domains of cognitive function amongst age groups 60-90 years old.
Purpose:
On a broad level, the purpose of this experiment was to determine whether open-motor skill sports can counteract the decline in mental processing. More specifically, older fencers and non-athletes were compared against younger fencers and non-athletes.
The study observed the effects of fencing (open-skill sport) with a moderate aerobic component, on the executive ability level in middle-aged people in their 50s. Fencers were chosen for this study as there are fast decisions as well as rapid changes depending on the opponent. The researchers claimed that fencing trains executive functions (planning, cognitive flexibility, rule acquisition, decisions of action, inhibition, and the selection of relevant sensory information).
One of the key takeaways from the background was the reasoning for the task chosen. The task was chosen to mimic fencing which was because many of the executive processes within fencing such as:
Stimulus discrimination – Ability to differentiate between one stimulus and another similar stimulus.
Stimulus-response mapping – Mapping of the change in the environment is the stimulus
Decision making – The process of deciding between choices
Response execution– Performing an action by tasks
Methods/Procedure
These methods helped me determine my populations and what common grounds they will share:
- 40 subjects participated in the study and were divided into:
- 10 older fencers (mean age = 49.5 yr, SD = 2.9 yr)
- 10 young fencers (mean age = 24.0 yr, SD = 3.9 yr)
- 10 older nonathletes (mean age = 47.9 yr, SD = 2.6 yr),
- 10 young nonathletes (mean age = 24.6 yr, SD = 4.8 yr).
Factors that were looked at when creating population: gender, same fencing club, education level, socioeconomic status, years of studying
- The weapon type does not seem to have been mentioned which is a major flaw and factor that I must incorporate
Standards:
Younger fencers – Minimum 6 years
Older fencers – Minimum 26 years
Free of neurological disorders, medications, and cardiovascular disease
Warm-up trials were also provided.
Procedure:
- A stimulus was created through four squared configurations made of 4 x 4 bars that were visible for 260 ms on a dark gray background. The fixation point was a yellow circle at the center and the four configurations were displayed randomly with equal probabilities.
- Discriminative Reaction Task:
- 10 runs of 40 go and 40 no go trials
- Two configurations were targets and two were non targets
- SUBJECT REQUIRED TO PRESS A KEY WITH THEIR RIGHT HAND AS SOON AS IT APPEARED
- Example of Go and no go stimuli – Tasks that incorporate this are found online and may be a useful measure of a participant’s speed and control
- Simple Reaction Task:
- 5 runs of 80 trials
- Subjects respond with any of the four configurations
- Accuracy – Measured by # of omissions, anticipations, and false alarms
The study also chose to use a Brainvision system to determine electrophysiological recordings and analysis. Horizontal eye movements, blinks, and vertical eye movements were looked at. The reasoning for using this was to see how the brain networks may differ.
Results:
Numerical data
ICV = the SD of RTs / the mean of RTs
Overall Conclusions:
- Younger individuals were faster than older individuals
- Fencing had more false alarms than non-athletes
- Fencers were faster than non-athletes
- % of anticipation was significantly different by age and sport.
- Young fencers had more anticipation than the other three groups.
- RTs were significantly affected by age ( younger individuals were faster than older individuals)
- RTs were also significantly affected by sport (fencers were faster than non-athletes)
Broader implications:
In summary, this study relates to my topic as it contrasts younger and older fencers and non-athletes which is what I ultimately intend to do in my project. Additionally, this study helped me understand inhibitory control and the effect of respective stimuli in fencers and non-fencers. On a smaller level, I was able to come up with potential questions to survey my desired population and the four categories of people who will participate in the task. Though this study contrasted open motor athletes (fencers) against closed motor nonathletes, it had a primary focus on determining which group had a higher chance of deterring age-related cognitive declines. They argue that cognitive decline is due to a failed inhibition. This is essentially where irrelevant stimuli are not limited and distract the individual. Observing inhibitory control in my project will be necessary as it affects the speed of decision-making and the speed of executing an action. Additionally, the concept of a go/no go stimuli is encapsulated within the sport of fencing. Fencers must be able to know when to “go” and when not to “go” when performing their actions. However, I do hope to do further research on better testing methods besides the one used with the “squared configurations”. In terms of the data analysis, the graphs were easy to read and are a takeaway for how I can display my research in the future. One of the conclusions that shocked me was that fencers had more false alarms than non-athletes. A possible explanation for this may be the unusual timings of footwork that create anticipation and false alarms that cause fencers to perform an action even though the moment is non-optimal. I also had some lingering questions such as how anticipation can be measured and is electro-physical data necessary? Overall, this experiment’s results are validated and make sense within the context of my hypothesis that fencers (open motor athletes) have faster reaction times than non-athletes. I intend to expand on this by finding other ways to measure inhibitory control and look at the trade-off between speed and accuracy.
Till next time,
Zaky
Citation:
TADDEI, FRANCESCO1; BULTRINI, ALESSANDRO1; SPINELLI, DONATELLA1,2; DI RUSSO, FRANCESCO1,2 Neural Correlates of Attentional and Executive Processing in Middle-Age Fencers, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise: June 2012 – Volume 44 – Issue 6 – p 1057-1066 doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e31824529c2