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This story is from the category Theraputic Worlds
Date posted: 18/11/2008 Two researchers from the School of Optometry of the Universit? de Montr?al have discovered how to train the brain of athletes to improve their overall athletic performance. Professor Jocelyn Faubert and postdoctoral student David Tinjust, put a dozen soccer, tennis and hockey players through multiple object-tracking exercises. The athletes' capacity to absorb a lot of information simultaneously and manage it efficiently increased on average by 53 percent. In one of these exercises, subjects in the automatic virtual environment cave were asked to follow the increasingly rapid movements of a series of balls and identify those that quickly changed colour. After each training session, which lasted about an hour, results were recorded and athletes could note their progress. "It's like physical training, but for the brain," says Faubert. The approach has already gained great popularity among athletes, from star goalie Kim St-Pierre to North American boxing champion Anthonin D?carie. "In their normal workouts, athletes regularly evaluate their physical performance, but until now there has been no tool that could rate their cognitive performance," says Faubert. "If an athlete feels both physically and mentally ready, that can only have a positive influence on his or her performance." Athletes could wear a virtual helmet that would allow them to train anywhere. They could also wear cybernetic gloves and glasses and, while viewing superimposed images, they could practise complex movements with a fictitious opponent. Every movement of the hand, foot and head would be recorded with sensors. See the full Story via external site: www.physorg.com Most recent stories in this category (Theraputic Worlds): 13/01/2017: Gaming to treat depression |
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