Search results for " performance"
showing 10 items of 2618 documents
Quantifying coordination and coordination variability in backward versus forward running: Implications for control of motion
2015
The aims of this study were to compare coordination and coordination variability in backward and forward running and to investigate the effects of speed on coordination variability in both backward and forward running. Fifteen healthy male participants took part in this study to run forwards and backwards on a treadmill at 80%, 100% and 120% of their preferred running speeds. The coordinate data of passive reflective markers attached to body segments were recorded using motion capture systems. Coordination of shank-foot and thigh-shank couplings in sagittal plane was quantified using the continuous relative phase method. Coordination variability was calculated as the standard deviation of a…
Alpha-amylase serum levels in professional soccer players are not related with physical fitness.
2017
Backgorund Recent evidence has showed that serum or salivary values of α-amylase predict endurance running performance. In this study we investigate whether serum α-amylase concentration may be associated with training status during a competitive season and after a detraining period in professional soccer players. Methods The study population consisted in 15 male professional soccer players from an Italian major league team (age [mean±SD] 27±5 years, weight 76.9±4.1 kg, height 1.82±0.05 m). Serum α-amylase levels were measured 3 times during the last part of a competitive season (January, March and May) and just before preseason training (July). Results Metabolic and cardiovascular fitness …
Acute stress and working memory: The role of sex and cognitive stress appraisal
2016
Sex is considered a moderating factor in the relationship between stress and cognitive performance. However, sex differences and the impact of cognitive stress appraisal on working memory performance have not received much attention. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of physiological responses (heart rate and salivary cortisol) and cognitive stress appraisal in Working Memory (WM) performance in males and females. For this purpose, we subjected a comparable number of healthy young adult males (N=37) and females (N=45) to a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), and we evaluated WM performance before and after the stress task. Females performed better on att…
Enhancing effects of acute psychosocial stress on priming of non-declarative memory in healthy young adults.
2011
Social stress affects cognitive processes in general, and memory performance in particular. However, the direction of these effects has not been clearly established, as it depends on several factors. Our aim was to determine the impact of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) reactivity to psychosocial stress on short-term non-declarative memory and declarative memory performance. Fifty-two young participants (18 men, 34 women) were subjected to the Trier Social Stress Task (TSST) and a control condition in a crossover design. Implicit memory was assessed by a priming test, and explicit memory was assessed by the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test…
Effects of Combined Strength and Sprint Training on Lean Mass, Strength, Power and Sprint Performance in Masters Road Cyclists
2017
Del Vecchio, L, Stanton, R, Reaburn, P, Macgregor, C, Meerkin, J, Villegas, J, and Korhonen, MT. Effects of combined strength and sprint training on lean mass, strength, power, and sprint performance in masters road cyclists. J Strength Cond Res 33(1): 66-79, 2019-Strength and sprint-training exercises are integral part of training in many younger endurance cyclists to improve cycling efficiency and sprinting ability. This study was undertaken to examine whether muscle and performance characteristics could be improved in endurance-trained masters cyclist by adding strength and sprint-training stimuli into their training regimen. Twenty-five masters road cyclists were assigned to a combined …
The Doors and People Test: The Effect of Frontal Lobe Lesions on Recall and Recognition Memory Performance
2016
Objective: Memory deficits in patients with frontal lobe lesions are most apparent on free recall tasks that require the selection, initiation, and implementation of retrieval strategies. The effect of frontal lesions on recognition memory performance is less clear with some studies reporting recognition memory impairments but others not. The majority of these studies do not directly compare recall and recognition within the same group of frontal patients, assessing only recall or recognition memory performance. Other studies that do compare recall and recognition in the same frontal group do not consider recall or recognition tests that are comparable for difficulty. Recognition memory imp…
Prismatic Adaptation Modulates Oscillatory EEG Correlates of Motor Preparation but Not Visual Attention in Healthy Participants.
2017
Prismatic adaption (PA) has been proposed as a tool to induce neural plasticity and is used to help neglect rehabilitation. It leads to a recalibration of visuomotor coordination during pointing as well as to aftereffects on a number of sensorimotor and attention tasks, but whether these effects originate at a motor or attentional level remains a matter of debate. Our aim was to further characterize PA aftereffects by using an approach that allows distinguishing between effects on attentional and motor processes. We recorded EEG in healthy human participants (9 females and 7 males) while performing a new double step, anticipatory attention/motor preparation paradigm before and after adaptat…
Parieto-frontal interactions in visual-object and visual-spatial working memory: Evidence from transcranial magnetic stimulation
2001
This study aimed to investigate whether transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can induce selective working memory (WM) deficits of visual-object versus visual-spatial information in normal humans. Thirty-five healthy subjects performed two computerized visual n-back tasks, in which they were required to memorize spatial locations or abstract patterns. In a first series of experiments, unilateral or bilateral TMS was delivered on posterior parietal and middle temporal regions of both hemispheres after various delays during the WM task. Bilateral temporal TMS increased reaction times (RTs) in the visual-object, whereas bilateral parietal TMS selectively increased RTs in the visual-spatial W…
Electrophysiological signatures of masked transposition priming in a same-different task: Evidence with strings of letters vs. pseudoletters
2012
Research on masked transposed-letter priming (i.e., jugde-JUDGE triggers a faster response than jupte-JUDGE) has become a key phenomenon to reveal how the brain encodes letter position. Recent behavioural evidence suggests that the mechanism responsible for position coding in a masked priming procedure works with familiar "object" identities (e.g., letters, digits, symbols) but not with unfamiliar object identities (e.g., pseudoletters). Here we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the time course of masked transposition priming of letters vs. pseudoletters in a cue-target same-different matching task. Target stimuli were preceded by a masked prime that could be: (i) identical to…
Specific forms of neural activity associated with tactile space awareness
2002
Left tactile extinction, in which a left tactile stimulus fails to access consciousness only when a right stimulus is presented simultaneously, offers a model for studying tactile awareness from its transitory absence. Pairs of transcranial magnetic stimuli (TMS) on the parietal cortex inhibit contralateral tactile perception when separated by an interval of 1 ms. We have applied this technique on the left parietal cortex of right brain damaged (RBD) patients and normal subjects and have shown a selective lack of paired TMS inhibitory effects on right tactile perception of patients during bimanual stimulation. TMS effects were normal during unimanual right stimulation. These results suggest…