Mechanisms of Action Anticipation in Table Tennis Players: A Multivoxel Pattern Analysis Study

Qingchun Ji; Likai Liu; Yingzhi Lu; Chenglin Zhou; Yingying Wang

doi:10.1016/j.neuroscience.2024.03.016

Mechanisms of Action Anticipation in Table Tennis Players: A Multivoxel Pattern Analysis Study

Neuroscience. 2024 Mar 19:546:33-40. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2024.03.016. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Qingchun Ji¹, Likai Liu², Yingzhi Lu², Chenglin Zhou², Yingying Wang³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physical Education, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, No. 333, Longteng Road, Songjiang District, Shanghai 201620, People's Republic of China; Sports Economic Management Research Center, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, No. 333, Longteng Road, Songjiang District, Shanghai 201620, People's Republic of China.
² School of Psychology, Shanghai University of Sport, No. 650, Qingyuanhuan Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai 201620, People's Republic of China; Key Laboratory of Motor Cognitive Assessment and Regulation, Shanghai University of Sport, No. 650, Qingyuanhuan Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai 201620, People's Republic of China.
³ School of Psychology, Shanghai University of Sport, No. 650, Qingyuanhuan Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai 201620, People's Republic of China; Key Laboratory of Motor Cognitive Assessment and Regulation, Shanghai University of Sport, No. 650, Qingyuanhuan Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai 201620, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: wangyingying@sus.edu.cn.

PMID: 38513759
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2024.03.016

Abstract

An exceptional ability to accurately anticipate an opponent's action is paramount for competitive athletes and highlights their experiential mastery. Despite conventional associations of action observation with specific brain regions, neuroimaging discrepancies persist. To explore the brain regions and neural mechanisms undergirding action anticipation, we compared distinct brain activation patterns involved in table tennis serve anticipation of expert table tennis athletes vs. non-experts by using both univariate analysis and multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA). We collected functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 29 table tennis experts and 34 non-experts as they pressed a button to predict the trajectory of a ball in a table tennis serve video truncated at the moment of racket-ball contact vs. pressing any button while viewing a static image of the first video frame. MVPA was applied to assess whether it could accurately differentiate experts from non-experts. MVPA results indicated moderate accuracy (90.48%) for differentiating experts from non-experts. Brain regions contributing most to the differentiation included the left cerebellum, the vermis, the right middle temporal pole, the inferior parietal cortex, the bilateral paracentral lobule, and the left supplementary motor area. The findings suggest that brain regions associated with cognitive conflict monitoring and motor cognition contribute to the action anticipation ability of expert table tennis players.

Keywords: MVPA; action anticipation; fMRI; table tennis players.