Play sports (smartly) for a quieter brain and better auditory processing

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Ath­letes Have Qui­eter Brains, New Research Shows (Sci News):

“No one would argue against the fact that sports lead to bet­ter phys­i­cal­ly fit­ness, but we don’t always think of brain fit­ness and sports,” said Pro­fes­sor Nina Kraus, direc­tor of the Audi­to­ry Neu­ro­science Lab­o­ra­to­ry at North­west­ern University.

“We’re say­ing that play­ing sports can tune the brain to bet­ter under­stand one’s sen­so­ry environment.”

Pro­fes­sor Kraus’ team exam­ined the brain health of 495 female and male stu­dent ath­letes and 493 age- and sex-matched con­trol subjects.

The researchers deliv­ered speech syl­la­bles to study par­tic­i­pants through ear­buds and record­ed the brain’s activ­i­ty with scalp electrodes.

They ana­lyzed the ratio of back­ground noise to the response to the speech sounds by look­ing at how big the response to sound was rel­a­tive to the back­ground noise.

Ath­letes had an enhanced abil­i­ty to tamp down back­ground elec­tri­cal noise.

“A seri­ous com­mit­ment to phys­i­cal activ­i­ty seems to track with a qui­eter ner­vous sys­tem,” Pro­fes­sor Kraus said.

The Study:

Play Sports for a Qui­eter Brain: Evi­dence From Divi­sion I Col­le­giate Ath­letes (Sports Health). From the abstract:

• Back­ground: Play­ing sports has many ben­e­fits, includ­ing boost­ing phys­i­cal, car­dio­vas­cu­lar, and men­tal fit­ness. We test­ed whether ath­let­ic ben­e­fits extend to sen­so­ry processing—specifically audi­to­ry processing—as mea­sured by the fre­quen­cy-fol­low­ing response (FFR), a scalp-record­ed elec­tro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal poten­tial that cap­tures neur­al activ­i­ty pre­dom­i­nate­ly from the audi­to­ry mid­brain to com­plex sounds.
• Hypoth­e­sis: Giv­en that FFR ampli­tude is sen­si­tive to expe­ri­ence, with enrich­ment enhanc­ing FFRs and injury reduc­ing them, we hypoth­e­sized that play­ing sports is a form of enrich­ment that results in greater FFR amplitude.
• Meth­ods: We mea­sured FFRs to the speech syl­la­ble “da” in 495 stu­dent-ath­letes across 19 Divi­sion I teams and 493 age- and sex-matched con­trols and com­pared them on 3 mea­sures of FFR ampli­tude: ampli­tude of the response, ampli­tude of the back­ground noise, and the ratio of these 2 measures.
• Results: Ath­letes have larg­er respons­es to sound than nonath­letes, dri­ven by a reduc­tion in their lev­el of back­ground neur­al noise.
• Con­clu­sion: These find­ings sug­gest that play­ing sports increas­es the gain of an audi­to­ry sig­nal by turn­ing down the back­ground noise. This mode of enhance­ment may be tied to the over­all fit­ness lev­el of ath­letes and/or the height­ened need of an ath­lete to engage with and respond to audi­to­ry stim­uli dur­ing competition.

News in context:

• Report finds only 35% of Cana­di­an youth get the phys­i­cal activ­i­ty rec­om­mend­ed for brain health
• Study: Only 5% of US chil­dren ages 8–11 fol­low screen time, sleep and exer­cise guide­lines rec­om­mend­ed for brain development
• Play­ing Amer­i­can foot­ball before age 12 is linked to long-term neu­ropsy­chi­atric and cog­ni­tive problems
• What are cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and how to boost them?
• How learn­ing changes your brain