The study brings brain imaging into a real-world competitive setting.
Wearing an electrode-studded cap, a table tennis player stares down an opponent. This is no flesh-and-blood adversary; the robotic metal barrel across the table fires a ball every few seconds.
“This means an awful lot of electrodes on a small space in your head,” says Daniel Ferris, a UF neuroscientist and co-author of the study. Either way, right before a player received the serve, brain activity spiked in a region involved in planning and integrating visual cues and movement. When facing a human opponent, these neurons typically fired in unison, a sign that the brain is in an idle state. But against a robot opponent, a player’s brain activity looked different: It was less coordinated, with brain cells firing at different times.
Many elite athletes, including those in table tennis, already use machines to train. But this study suggests the practice may not perfectly mimic facing human opponents, the authors note. “You want to get as close to a representation of what you're going to have to perform,” Ferris says. “Given how different the brain dynamics are in a lot of these areas [when facing a robot], I think it's not a great match.
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