Miss your putts? The key EEG index to achieve the superior golf putting performance
Ming-Yang Cheng1,2, Kuo-Ping Wang3, Dirk Koester1,2, Tsung-Min Hung3 and Thomas Schack1,2
1Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), Bielefeld, Germany, 2Faculty of Psychology and Sport Science, Bielefeld University, Germany and 3Department of Physical Education. National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan
Email: ming-yang.cheng@uni-bielefeld.de
Keywords: Performance enhancement, EEG, golf putting, SMR, neurofeedback
Objective: Psychomotor efficiency refers to the processing efficiency in the cortical activity in sports performance. Superior performers achieve the high psychomotor efficiency by attenuating the irrelevant cortical processing. Previous studies promising reported a close relationship between the cortical activity in the sensorimotor area and psychomotor efficiency. This study puts forward sensorimotor rhythm (SMR), 12–15 Hz of the electroencephalogram (EEG) in the sensorimotor area, serves as a promising EEG marker which might become the primary training target for the neurofeedback training in sports performance enhancement.
Methods: Thirty-six pre-elite golfers were recruited to perform 40 putts on an artificial green while EEG was recorded. To understand the SMR activity in the superior putting performance, we extracted and compared the SMR activity from the best ten putts and the worst ten putts.
Results: The best putting performance is associated with higher SMR power during the last second before the backswing when compared with the worst putting performance. In both performances pool, no other changes were observed on the flanking frequency bands, such as theta and low beta bands. This finding lends support to the notion of psychomotor efficiency hypothesis and infers that SMR is the sensitive component, which separates the best putting performance from the worst one.
Conclusion: This finding suggests that reduced interference at the sensorimotor area, as reflected by higher SMR power, may lead to superior psychomotor efficiency during the putting preparation. We conclude that SMR may be a promising component in understanding the psychomotor efficiency for precision sports performance. Future studies are recommended to evaluate the beneficial effects which incorporating the augmented SMR neurofeedback training to develop an efficient and effective training protocol for sports performance enhancement.
(For oral presentation)
