Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to Assist Experienced Pistol Shooters in Gaining Even-Better Performance Scores

Abstract

Recently, brain stimulation has been considered as a promising method for the empowerment of athletes' performance. This study recruited 16 pistol shooters who were randomly assigned to two arms, including the control receiving no intervention and the experimental group receiving either sham or real transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), i.e., anodal stimulation and cathodal suppression over the cerebellar and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) regions, respectively. Our outcome measures were the score and latency to shooting, as well as number of errors and task time in the dynamic tremor and mirror-tracing tasks. Our findings suggested that tDCS vs. sham improves the average shooting score in pistol shooters by 2.3% ± 0.65 (mean ± SEM, p = 0.018). Furthermore, the bullet hole distance from the Air Pistol Target center was found to be significantly shorter in the experimental (tDCS) group (p = 0.02). In the control group, no significant difference was noted between the shooting scores of shooters over the consecutive two sessions. In terms of latency to shooting, no significant difference was noted within groups between both sessions. However, for the dynamic tremor task outcome, there were significantly less errors after real tDCS than after sham stimulation. In addition, the results of the mirror-tracing task in the tDCS group showed significant differences between the sham and real-tDCS sessions favoring the real-tDCS session (p = 0.001). Therefore, concurrent suppression of dlPFC and stimulation of cerebellum through tDCS may increase shooting scores in experienced pistol shooters.

Transcranial direct current stimulation to enhance athletic performance outcome in experienced bodybuilders

“…With respect to sample size calculation, we referred to the earlier related reports [13, 19, 23–25] in which the sample size ranged from 8 To 16 The Kelsey and Fleiss sample size calculation formula [26] was used (power 80 and α = 0.05) whereby the minimum justifiable number of 20 participants were decided to get enrolled. Based on earlier reports in the field of sport, the specialized population namely bodybuilders limited the sample size of the study.…”

“…In one of our research-team’s reports, anodal and cathodal tDCS over the left prefronral and ipsilateral cerebellar cortices, respectively, in professional pistol shooters could improve shooting task scores [19]. However, this emerging field requires more research to define the effectiveness of tDCS on athletes in various sport field as well as the optimized protocols including stimulation duration, electrode montage and stimulation amplitude for tDCS application in sport.…”

Simultaneous transcranial and transcutaneous spinal direct current stimulation to enhance athletic performance outcome in experienced boxers

“…However, the stimulation could not leave an effect on the athletes’ shooting speed/delay. Additionally, tDCS reduced the number of task-specific tremors which potentially supports the theatrical relationship between tDCS-induced reduced physiological tremor and enhanced shooting performance 7 .…”

“…Our study findings suggest that the simultaneous stimulation of motor cortex and spinal cord significantly improves selective attention and reaction speed in experienced boxers. Neuromodulation and brain stimulation techniques have been used in recent years to improve athletic performance; however, few systematic studies 2 , 7 , 22 , 23 have analyzed these new techniques. Most available sport studies have investigated the endurance of athletes 5 , 23 , and no researcher seems to have investigated the effects of brain stimulation on the accuracy, acceleration, and visuospatial memory of experienced boxers.…”

Transcranial direct current stimulation and sporting performance: A systematic review and meta‐analysis of transcranial direct current stimulation effects on physical endurance, muscular strength and visuomotor skills

“…This finding is nonetheless promising, and indicates that further studies in this area are warranted. One of the positive effects was observed in a study by Kamali et al (2019) who simultaneously stimulated the left DLFPC and right cerebellum, finding that the tDCS group had an improved accuracy score in a shooting task. The cerebellum is a key brain area for motor learning, especially in sensory prediction errors (De Zeeuw and Ten Brinke, 2015), which suggests it should be targeted in future studies exploring visuomotor skills.…”