14 DAY TRIAL // An investigation into the ways in which the brains of 87 top-ranked Brazilian volleyball players perform when made to carry out various cognitive tasks has led researchers to the conclusion that there is more to being an elite athlete than just being incredibly fit.
Thus, researcher Arthur Kramer, i.e. the current director of the Beckman Institute, and his colleagues came to understand that the brains of these people receive almost as much training as their bodies do.
This translates into the athletes being able to process the information they receive from their surroundings significantly faster than ordinary folks are.
Furthermore, they have fewer issues in terms of keeping their behavior well under control when circumstances demand for it.
These conclusions were reached by asking both athletes and regular folks to carry out several tasks, and by closely monitoring their performances.
Despite the fact that their excelling at certain cognitive tasks first and foremost helps them when they play their chosen sport, it appears that the athletes' day-to-day routine also benefits from the fact that their brains are wired in a slightly different manner.
According to the official website for the University of Illinois, such athletes are first and foremost more efficient when asked to perform memory tests at a rather fast pace.
Furthermore, they find it easier to navigate several different tasks, the researchers maintain.
“We found that athletes were generally able to inhibit behavior, to stop quickly when they had to, which is very important in sport and in daily life. They were also able to activate, to pick up information from a glance and to switch between tasks more quickly than nonathletes,” Arthur Kramer says.
“Our understanding is imperfect because we don’t know whether these abilities in the athletes were 'born' or 'made.' Perhaps people gravitate to these sports because they’re good at both. Or perhaps it’s the training that enhances their cognitive abilities as well as their physical ones. My intuition is that it’s a little bit of both,” Arthur Kramer goes on to explain.