A tiny brain region helps athletes achieve peak performance
Published: Monday, Sep 16th 2024, 13:00
Volver a Live Feed
The state of attention depends on a handful of neurons. Swiss researchers have identified a tiny region in the brain that controls whether attention is focused on a single task or on the entire environment.
This finding could help athletes to better "get into the zone", the University of Geneva said on Monday. Being "in the zone" is a term used by athletes to describe an exceptional state of concentration in which they devote their full attention to the sport and block out everything else.
Researchers from the University of Geneva and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) have now investigated how the brain manages to switch back and forth between this intense concentration and a broader perception of the environment. The results were published on Monday in the journal "Nature Neuroscience".
The secret of top athletes
They identified the locus coeruleus (LC), a small region in the brain stem, in the brains of mice. This brain region produces noradrenaline, a neurotransmitter involved in the regulation of arousal. Depending on how strongly and at what frequency the neurons in the LC are activated, the brain releases different amounts of noradrenaline. The brain region thus acts like a switch between different states of attention.
"The secret of top athletes may therefore lie in mastering their LC," said study leader Valerio Zerbi from the University of Geneva in the press release.
©Keystone/SDA
Spanish 
English 
German 
French 
Arabic