Athletic cognitive support -
The beneficial effects of caffeine, creatine, and probiotics have been documented so far. There are many plant products, herbal extracts, or phytonutrients that have been shown to affect precognitive activity, but more research is needed.
Beetroot juice and nootropics can also be essential nutrients for cognitive performance. For the sake of players' eyesight, it would be useful to use lutein, which, in addition to improving vision and protecting against eye diseases, can also affect cognitive functions.
In supporting the physical and mental abilities of e-athletes the base is a well-balanced diet with adequate hydration. There is a lack of sufficient evidence that has investigated the relationship between dietary effects and improved performance in esports.
Therefore, there is a need for randomized controlled trials involving esports players. Moreover, neuroimaging research suggests that PE can indeed improve memory performance and cognitive control Heinzel et al. While a complete review of the relevant literature is out of scope for the present contribution, it is possible to outline the main cognitive areas affected by sports and PE.
In general, any sport activity has both general and specific improvements in cognitive functions, based on their context.
Cognitive flexibility is an important asset in sports: for example, long-jumpers do not execute a rigid-programmed pattern of stride lengths, instead they must assess each time what could be an optimal contact with the runway and the regulation of the length of the final stride for optimizing jump length Craig, Therefore, the skill of assessing and regulating their own bodies in reference to the context each time is essential to obtain optimal results.
An improvement in working memory is found in athletes performing aerobic activities Cassilhas et al. This kind of PE, common to many sports, is associated with a faster cognitive processing speed Hillman et al. It is also associated with improved attention control Shatil, , executive control processes e.
Research by Nagamatsu et al. Team ball games increase the ability to shift attention as a special perceptual skill, directing attention toward stimuli which initially appear as irrelevant. This kind of training also leads to the improvement of pattern recognition or the knowledge of situational probabilities Abernethy and Russell, Many sensorial stimuli bombard athletes, who must consider the shared space and simultaneous participation of others, with a sort of uncertainty regarding the action of an opponent player Práxedes et al.
During the game, players must select and filter salient information by redirecting the focus of attention. There are also instructions and rules that athletes must respect in the tactical DM of a team.
For this reason, players do not pass the ball to obvious players e. Therefore, it is possible that players fail to find the optimal technical and tactical solution; in other words, concentration and attention are fundamental for players to be able to see the various opportunities during a specific moment of play Memmert and Furley, In collective sports, players have various roles, each with different requests and cognitive abilities in progress.
This strategy helps him or her to guide actions, resulting in more saves, learning how and when to stop the ball. At the same time, players near the goalpost have to make the decision whether to try a shot at the goal or pass the ball to a nearby teammate, evaluating the situation and choosing the most functional action more or less immediately Gréhaigne et al.
It is essential to know, for example, what makes a movement deceptive Brault et al. In volleyball, as showed by Montuori et al. The integration between visual perception and all the other information presented during the game converge to DM as an integrated process of elaboration during specific times.
Indeed it has been demonstrated that expert athletes have greater fixation on relevant tasks and more successful experiences in DM than beginners De Oliveira Castro et al. In this sense, it is not sufficient to assess the physical properties of the environment e.
Visual-spatial attentional processing is, at the same time, increased and volleyball players have to train using perceptual-cognitive tasks constantly with high flexible attention Alves et al.
In conclusion, not only context and circumstances make the difference; sports involve cognitive training as an essential part of performance. The domain of cognition especially involved in sports are: executive functioning, working and declarative memory Morris, , attention and processing speed Gao and Mandryk, ; Iuliano et al.
Athletes are extremely committed to empowering these processes in order to improve their role within the competition and achieve optimal performance. There are several studies that show how good performances in sport are characterized not only by the efficient execution of tactical movements, but also by a high level of DM.
Indeed, an athlete will never achieve a positive outcome of his tactical movement if the selected skill is inappropriate to the context and to the specific situation in which it is performed Liu et al.
Therefore, DM is an ability that could be improved and modified through deliberate practice and the development of skills Abernethy and Russell, In the end, elite athletes report a higher number of interoceptive stimuli during the action itself Haase et al.
In other words their self-awareness increases and so does performance management as a consequence Toner et al. Research comparing expert and novice athletes is useful to see how DM skills can be trained and possibly improved by continual sports practice; although it is not realistic to expect non-professional athletes to develop at a rate similar to elite ones, it is possible to prefigure the implementation of sport experiences to help people to train their ability to make decisions.
Studies show that cognitive performance can be improved by duration of moderate to vigorous physical activity, for example in breast cancer patients and survivors Hartman et al. Peterson et al.
Evidences of benefits of high-intensity interval training for aerobic fitness and cardiovascular risk factors are emerging in cancer patients Northey et al.
Specifically, Zimmer et al. A number of studies support the idea of benefits of exercise for cancer survivors, underlining significant health improvements Irwin, ; Schmitz et al. In this sense, sports could be adapted to individual characteristics of patients: it is not important to turn patients into high-level athletes, but to help them to benefit from PE health outcomes, and to avoid contraindications related to health status.
We have seen how sports help to train cognitive abilities that are relevant to DM, possibly reducing the detrimental effects of the disease and side effects of treatment. We think that sports may share properties that help to train the ability to take decisions directly.
At least five of such properties could be identified resumed in Figure 1. Figure 1. Strategical and tactical DM is a component of any sport, which many athletes would consider as important as physical preparation and technical skills Renfree et al.
Sports always include a pre-competition activity formal or informal , in which athletes and coaches carefully plan the actions to be implemented later.
However, the actions previously planned must then be modified in the context of the competition, both by individual players and the team as a whole. This regards the necessity to implement tactical DM or being able to take novel decisions within a limited time frame, usually involving intuitive rather than rational thinking Memmert and Furley, ; Memmert and Roca, Cancer patients could benefit from the training of DM by sports activity.
Sport provides the opportunity to train DM skills regardless of the sports context, thus allowing the patient to learn how to find possible solutions with others and then to implement them in his or her own situation.
Who should I call in case of emergency? Will my family do it too? However, Herrmann et al. Taking into consideration the subjective time, training the ability to decide in complex contexts could be a fundamental resource that patients may be able to implement through sports, along with exercising the ability to regulate emotions.
In any sport, athletes have to alternate focused and divided attention to monitor information important for managing the game or activity Memmert, ; Liao and Masters, Moreover, such sophisticated attention management should often be maintained in the face of emotional activation, which could possibly be overwhelming and distracting Corr, ; Jones, When in a disadvantageous position, or even when about to lose the game, a team and the individual players as well become able to control emotions and keep attentional functions at a high level.
People who have to manage a chronic health condition could benefit from such an attention training which could be more effective than abstract cognitive exercises. Thanks to tactical creativity athletes learn to re-elaborate usual practices and behaviors and to find solutions that no one had ever thought of before.
In other words, sports allow the athlete to learn to go beyond what appears to be the initial information and rules, developing alternative solutions. Finding alternative solutions that move away from predefined patterns is a very useful resource for patients who have to take decisions on therapy and lifestyle changes because it provides them with the ability to deal with the problem not being overwhelmed but finding solutions that may have positive implications.
In sports, athletes may develop notable introspection processes. However, especially during the sport activity, they should be able to not be distracted by self-focused instead of performance-focused attention Liao and Masters, However, especially for what regards life-relevant choices, self-knowledge is fundamental: people may attribute excessive salience to problem features, this way undermining their own peculiarity.
For example, in a healthcare context, a patient may decide to change his dietary behavior. But then, the patient slowly discovers that he or she is not able to maintain the healthy diet in everyday life, so that the therapeutic process may be not effective in the end because of frequent violations of the rules the patient him- or herself had originally set.
When one has to win in a competition, he or she is driven to dedicate a notable amount of time to it, as well as cognitive resources even outside of the performances. Indeed, imagery practices have been analyzed in sports both by experimental and anecdotal evidence Behncke, ; Murphy, ; Schuster et al.
Sport strategies and methods could root deeply as mental representations of problems and solutions, in accordance with situated cognition theories which sustain that our cognitive processes are based on real-life contexts and practices Hutchins, ; Clancey, A patient who has to decide over therapy options or lifestyle changes and related struggles could represent decisions in a similar manner to the abstract representations coming from the sport experience, e.
In conclusion, the practice of sport and more PE provides positive exercise for the body and mind as, in addition to preventing diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, they also increase cognitive functions and especially the executive functions, including the DM process.
In oncological diseases, DM plays a key role as the patient is in the position of having to decide on important aspects that concern the entire continuum of the oncological disease, from prevention to end of life.
Implications for future research mean accounting for the complex outcomes of sport experience implementations within chronic patients care, for cancer patients and survivors especially.
It is possible to test the effectiveness of sport and PE in the empowerment of DM skills of cancer patients and survivors, investigating which type of sport is most suitable for this purpose, distinguishing between patients and their specific situations.
Systematic review efforts could be useful to identify evidence of transfer of sport-related experiences to DM in everyday life. In addition to quantitative research focused on outcomes, qualitative research could be employed to invite patients to narrate the experience of sports and the perceived transferability of sport skills and mental schemes to the management of healthcare decisions.
VS conceptualized the ideas presented in the study and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. LS contributed to the conceptualization and writing. ST supervised the writing and edited the manuscript. KM contributed important intellectual content and to the final revision.
GP contributed important intellectual content and supervised the whole process. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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