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The mobility and lability of nervous processes, along with the speed of excitation propagation through reflex arcs, are crucial factors determining the effectiveness of an individual's preparation for sports training and competitive processes. The aim of this study is to perform a comparative analysis of complex visual–motor reactions to moving objects among student-athletes engaged in different forms of physical activity in martial arts, with the goal of personalizing educational and training sessions. Materials and methods: Fifty-seven male students participated in the experiment, including 32 without specific sports training and 25 with sports experience in sambo and aikido categories. The equipment used was the \"TVES\" visual-motor reaction console with integrated \"Psychophysiology\" software. The study used the method of reaction to a moving object. The number of accurate, advanced and delayed reactions, the average reaction time, and the balance of nervous processes were assessed. Results: Students with sports experience showed more stable functioning of the central nervous system, as well as better mobility and lability of nervous processes, which is confirmed by reliable values of the studied indicators. Conclusion. During the test, student-athletes showed a predominance of accurate reactions, a more stable change in excitation and inhibition. They had a higher speed of excitation along the reflex arc compared to students from the untrained group. The results of cluster analysis among students without sports experience indicate instability of nervous processes with a predominance of excitation or inhibition processes. In the group of student-athletes, nervous processes are more balanced, which can have a positive impact on sports results.

The speed of sensorimotor response to external stimuli is a critical determinant of training effectiveness and an athlete's performance success. Research objective: To conduct a comparative analysis of visual-motor reaction states in students undergoing different organizational forms of sports training, with the aim of personalizing the training process in sport sambo. Materials and methods: The study comprised 64 male students, including 33 engaged in sport sambo as part of elective physical education and sports classes at the university, and 31 individuals part of the university's national team in this sport. Representatives of the second group had sports grades up to the first senior, as well as experience in martial arts from six months. The visual-motor reaction console \"TVES\" and the software \"Psychophysiology\" were used as equipment. The research used the \"choice reaction\" technique, in which the subject was asked to press the appropriate remote control button when stimuli appeared on a red or green screen. The number of stimuli presented was at least 70. The indicators of the average response time (ms), the time of correct and erroneous reactions, the standard deviation, the number of all errors, units and the Whipple accuracy coefficient, cu were analyzed. Also, at the end of the test, the number of subjects in each group who had a characteristic of the parameters as \"average\" was estimated. Students with the response time parameters \"more than average\" or \"inert\" and \"less than average\" or \"mobility\" were identified. Results. The analysis of the visual-motor reaction showed that the students who are part of the national sport sambo teams have a high response rate to the visual stimulus. The best results were also recorded among them in the average time values of correct and incorrect reactions, and the standard deviation. Students in the elective course of physical education showed the worst results in the number of errors when performing testing, as well as when comparing the accuracy coefficient. In addition, there were more subjects in this group who had an \"inert\" type of nervous processes. Conclusions. Students-athletes have a higher level of functional state of the central nervous system. The presence of sports specialization affects the lability and mobility of nervous processes and physical performance. The acquired knowledge can be used to individualize the educational and training process in martial arts.

In this study, we aimed to determine the difference of motor reaction time and accuracy between the patients with moderate multiple sclerosis (MS) and healthy subjects and to determine whether a specified cognitive-motor training can improve the speed and accuracy of information processing in patients with MS. A total of 205 patients (30% males) and 276 age-/gender-matched healthy subjects (31% males) were included in the study. Furthermore, using a stratified randomization method, patients with MS were randomly assigned to one of two groups: active information processing training (AIPT) (n = 49) or post-control (n = 55). The AIPT group was asked to complete a computerized visual-manual training program and the post-control group asked to complete the same task without an increase in difficulty. Before and after the intervention phase, the simple, choice, and semantic reaction times and accuracies of all participants were evaluated using the VLS measurement battery. Our results demonstrated that the case and control group were significantly different in terms of the simple, choice, and semantic motor reaction times and accuracies. Compared with the pre-intervention phase, the AIPT and control group’s performances in the post-intervention phase were considerably improved in simple, choice, and semantic motor reaction times and choice and semantic motor reaction accuracies. The results also showed that the AIPT group performed significantly better than the post-control group in terms of simple and choice motor reaction times. We showed the positive effects of training on the performance of patients with MS in motor reaction time and accuracy.

Sleep is essential for both cognition and maintenance of healthy brain function. Slow waves in neural activity contribute to memory consolidation, whereas cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) clears metabolic waste products from the brain. Whether these two processes are related is not known. We used accelerated neuroimaging to measure physiological and neural dynamics in the human brain. We discovered a coherent pattern of oscillating electrophysiological, hemodynamic, and CSF dynamics that appears during non–rapid eye movement sleep. Neural slow waves are followed by hemodynamic oscillations, which in turn are coupled to CSF flow. These results demonstrate that the sleeping brain exhibits waves of CSF flow on a macroscopic scale, and these CSF dynamics are interlinked with neural and hemodynamic rhythms.

How sleep helps learning and memory remains unknown. We report in mouse motor cortex that sleep after motor learning promotes the formation of postsynaptic dendritic spines on a subset of branches of individual layer V pyramidal neurons. New spines are formed on different sets of dendritic branches in response to different learning tasks and are protected from being eliminated when multiple tasks are learned. Neurons activated during learning of a motor task are reactivated during subsequent non–rapid eye movement sleep, and disrupting this neuronal reactivation prevents branch-specific spine formation. These findings indicate that sleep has a key role in promoting learning-dependent synapse formation and maintenance on selected dendritic branches, which contribute to memory storage.

Rapid eye movement sleep (REMS) has been linked with spatial and emotional memory consolidation. However, establishing direct causality between neural activity during REMS and memory consolidation has proven difficult because of the transient nature of REMS and significant caveats associated with REMS deprivation techniques. In mice, we optogenetically silenced medial septum γ-aminobutyric acid–releasing (MSGABA) neurons, allowing for temporally precise attenuation of the memory-associated theta rhythm during REMS without disturbing sleeping behavior. REMS-specific optogenetic silencing of MSGABA neurons selectively during a REMS critical window after learning erased subsequent novel object place recognition and impaired fear-conditioned contextual memory. Silencing MSGABA neurons for similar durations outside REMS episodes had no effect on memory. These results demonstrate that MSGABA neuronal activity specifically during REMS is required for normal memory consolidation.

ContextSleep has been suggested to be a modifier of recovery after a concussion and is associated with greater symptomatology and the number of days until symptom resolution. However, the physiological mechanism for why sleep disturbances occur remains poorly understood. Alterations in time spent in the stages of a sleep cycle after a concussion may contribute to recovery.ObjectiveThe purpose of our study was to use a noninvasive, sensor-derived measure of sleep stages to determine differences between collegiate athletes with or without a concussion, acutely after injury (<72 hours).DesignCase-control study.SettingDivision I collegiate athletics.Patients or Other ParticipantsDivision I collegiate athletes diagnosed with a concussion were compared with healthy-matched controls based on health history, demographics, and sport.Intervention(s)Individuals in both groups were provided with and instructed to wear an OURA ring actigraphy device nightly within 72 hours of their concussion.Main Outcome Measure(s)Differences in sensor-derived time spent in light, deep, and rapid eye-movement sleep, time awake, and total sleep time between groups.ResultsA total of 18 athletes was included in our analyses (9 concussed, 9 controls) with an average age of 19.3 ± 1.3 years. Individuals with a concussion spent less time in deep sleep (113.11 ± 33.1 versus 134.44 ± 51.1 minutes, P = .03) and more time awake (90.22 ± 30.0 versus 49.28 ± 11.5 minutes, P = .02) than individuals without a concussion. No significant differences were found for total sleep time or time spent in light or rapid eye-movement sleep.ConclusionsAcutely after concussion, individuals may demonstrate changes in sleep stages. Our results suggest that time spent in different stages of sleep may be a potential mechanism underlying recovery from concussion. Our results provide an important step in using wearable sensors to better understand sleep disturbances after concussion to help mitigate risk of a prolonged recovery.

For more than 2 decades, researchers have debated the nature of cognitive control in the guidance of visual attention. Stimulus-driven theories claim that salient stimuli automatically capture attention, whereas goal-driven theories propose that an individual’s attentional control settings determine whether salient stimuli capture attention. In the current study, we tested a hybrid account called the signal suppression hypothesis, which claims that all stimuli automatically generate a salience signal but that this signal can be actively suppressed by top-down attentional mechanisms. Previous behavioral and electrophysiological research has shown that participants can suppress covert shifts of attention to salient-but-irrelevant color singletons. In this study, we used eye-tracking methods to determine whether participants can also suppress overt shifts of attention to irrelevant singletons. We found that under conditions that promote active suppression of the irrelevant singletons, overt attention was less likely to be directed toward the salient distractors than toward nonsalient distractors. This result provides direct evidence that people can suppress salient-but-irrelevant singletons below baseline levels.

The concept of attention has a prominent place in cognitive psychology. Attention can be directed not only to perceptual information, but also to information in working memory (WM). Evidence for an internal focus of attention has come from the retro-cue effect : Performance in tests of visual WM is improved when attention is guided to the test-relevant contents of WM ahead of testing them. The retro-cue paradigm has served as a test bed to empirically investigate the functions and limits of the focus of attention in WM. In this article, we review the growing body of (behavioral) studies on the retro-cue effect. We evaluate the degrees of experimental support for six hypotheses about what causes the retro-cue effect: (1) Attention protects representations from decay, (2) attention prioritizes the selected WM contents for comparison with a probe display, (3) attended representations are strengthened in WM, (4) not-attended representations are removed from WM, (5) a retro-cue to the retrieval target provides a head start for its retrieval before decision making, and (6) attention protects the selected representation from perceptual interference. The extant evidence provides support for the last four of these hypotheses.

We assessed different aspects of tactile perception in young children (3–6 years) with autism. Autistic and neurotypical children completed vibrotactile tasks assessing reaction time, amplitude discrimination (sequential and simultaneous) and temporal discrimination (temporal order judgment and duration discrimination). Autistic children had elevated and more variable reaction times, suggesting slower perceptual-motor processing speed and/or greater distractibility. Children with autism also showed higher amplitude discrimination and temporal order judgement thresholds compared to neurotypical children. Tactile perceptual metrics did not associate with social or tactile sensitivities measured by parent-reports. Altered tactile behavioral responses appear in early childhood, can be quantified but appear dissociated from sensitivity. This implies these measures are complementary, but not necessarily related, phenomena of atypical tactile perception in autism.