Motor Resonance is Sensitive to Long but not Short Modulations of Physical Exercise

Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluate the mutual effect experience in a type of sport and the exertion of various levels of physical exercise have on the ability to recognize and decode others' facial expressions. Twenty-one taekwondo athletes and 17 soccer players participated in this study. Each of these participants performed a facialrecognition task while running on treadmill, with the task being performed at five different running speeds (i.e., at rest, 60%, 80%, 100%, and 120% of maximal aerobic speed). The results of this study revealed that the participants' motor resonance increased with greater effort produced. It also revealed that the practitioners of the fighting sport (taekwondo) were systemically faster and more accurate in terms of recognizing facial expressions than the practitioners of the team sport (soccer). The fighters' advantage over the collective sports practitioners in regard to recognition performance was mainly present at conditions involving higher intensities of effort. In conclusion, our study reveals that expertise in fighting sports, which require precise decoding of opponents' emotional states, is associated with enhanced ability to recognize facial expressions.Keywords: facial recognition, neural plasticity, physical effort, soccer, taekwondo MOJ Sports Medicine Research Article Open AccessMotor resonance is sensitive to long but not short modulations of physical exercise different levels of physical effort. An additional investigation here was to verify whether the impact of the short-term effect is modulated by the impact of the long-term effect. Methods ParticipantsTwenty-one expert taekwondo athletes (TKD, age 22±1 years; height 1.70±0.07m; body mass 70.1±7.5kg) and 17 soccer players (SOC, age 23±1years; height 1.70±0.03m; body mass 72.9±3 .7kg) participated in this study. Only TKD and SOC players with at least 10 years of experience in their respective sports and who participate regularly in national and international competition were included. Further, all participants were right-handed and possessed normal vision. All participants were volunteers and were informed of the procedures, methods, benefits, and possible risks involved in the study, and a written consent form was obtained from each. The experimental protocol was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki concerning human experimentation and was approved by the local ethical committee (decision number: 052/17). The experiment was conducted during the regular sports season, four to five months after the start of the competitive period; the participants were asked to maintain their regular training schedules throughout the experimental period (Table 1). Experimental design and procedures Physiological measuresThe participants underwent seven assessment sessions. In the first session, participants were provided complete information concerning the equipment and testing procedures that would be used and gave their consent to participate to this study; we also recorded their anthropomorphic and d...