Relationship between mode of sport training and general cognitive performance

Purpose: To investigate whether athletes who engage in different modes of sports training correspondingly exhibit different patterns of performance on general cognition tasks.Methods: Sixty participants were recruited into an endurance, motorically complex, or control group, and were administered a series of physical tests and neuropsychological assessments.Results: Athletes in the endurance group demonstrated the highest levels of cardiovascular fitness and those in the motorically complex group exhibited the highest levels of motor fitness. Nonetheless, no differences in cognitive performance were observed between the 3 groups.Conclusion: These findings indicate that the mode of sport training, which results in either high cardiovascular or high motor fitness, bears no relationship to measures of general cognition in elite athletes. The present findings suggest that coaches and athletic trainers should be encouraged to monitor athletes' stress levels during training in order to maximize the beneficial effects of such training on general cognitive performance.

The Dynamic Relationship of Brain Networks Across Time Windows During Product-Based Creative Thinking

Consensus of creativity research suggests that the measurement of both originality and valuableness is necessary when designing creativity tasks.However,few studies have emphasized valuableness when exploring underlying neural substrates of creative thinking.The present study employs product-based creativity tasks that measure both originality and valuableness in an exploration of the dynamic relationship between the default mode(DMN),executive control(ECN),and salience(SN)networks through time windows.This methodology highlights relevance,or valuableness,in creativity evaluation as opposed to divergent thinking tasks solely measuring originality.The researchers identified seven brain regions belonging to the ECN,DMN,and SN as regions of interest(ROIs),as well as four representative seeds to analyze functional connectivity in 25 college student participants.Results showed that all of the identified ROIs were involved during the creative task.The insula,precuneus,and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex(vlPFC)remained active across all stages of product-based creative thinking.Moreover,the connectivity analyses revealed varied interaction patterns of DMN,ECN,and SN at different thinking stages.The integrated findings of the whole brain,ROI,and connectivity analyses suggest a trend that the DMN and SN(which relate to bottom-up thinking)attenuate as time proceeds,whereas the vlPFC(which relates to top-down thinking)gets stronger at later stages;these findings reflect the nature of our creativity tasks and decision-making of valuableness in later stages.Based on brain region activation throughout execution of the task,we propose that product-based creative process may include three stages:exploration and association,incubation and insight,and finally,evaluation and decision making.This model provides a thinking frame for further research and classroom instruction.

Gender differences associated with orienting attentional networks in healthy subjects

Background Selective attention is considered one of the main components of cognitive functioning.A number of studies have demonstrated gender differences in cognition.This study aimed to investigate the gender differences in selective attention in healthy subjects.Methods The present experiment examined the gender differences associated with the efficiency of three attentional networks：alerting,orienting,and executive control attention in 73 healthy subjects （38 males）.All participants performed a modified version of the Attention Network Test （ANT）.Results Females had higher orienting scores than males （t=2.172,P 〈0.05）.Specifically,females were faster at covert orienting of attention to a spatially cued location.There were no gender differences between males and females in alerting （t=0.813,P 〉0.05） and executive control （t=0.945,P 〉0.05） attention networks.Conclusions There was a significant gender difference between males and females associated with the orienting network.Enhanced orienting attention in females may function to motivate females to direct their attention to a spatially cued location.

Dissociated deficits in attentional networks in social anxiety and depression

A critical cognitive symptom that is commonly involved in social anxiety and depression is attentional deficit. However, the functional relationship between attentional deficit and these two disorders remains poorly understood. Here, we behaviorally disentangled the three key attentional components(alerting, orienting, and executive control) using the established attentional network task(ANT) to investigate how social anxiety and depression are related to deficits in these attention components. We identified a double dissociation between the symptoms of social anxiety and depression and the attentional component deficits when processing non-emotional stimuli. While individuals vulnerable to social anxiety exhibited deficits in the orienting component, individuals vulnerable to depression were impaired in the executive control component. Our findings showed that social anxiety and depression were associated with deficits in different attentional components, which are not specific to emotional information.