What's in a footballer's brain?
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Hello, this is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Georgie.
And I'm Neil.
Neil, I'm not a huge fan of football, but I know you are. So why do you love it so much?
Oh, where can I start? I think it's the combination of the passion and also the skill and athleticism of the players. They call it the beautiful game for a reason.
Now, football players are faster than ever before, but the game is also about making very quick decisions.
Yes, to be the best of the best, some football clubs have started looking beyond the body to the brain. Here's Tom Cook, Academy psychologist for Nottingham Forest Football Club, talking to the BBC World Service.
We're watching these athletes make decisions in split instincts under the highest pressures and the highest intensities. It made a lot of sense to go, well, neurologically or cognitively, there's something going on.
There's something going on in the brain when the athletes are making quick decisions. If there's something going on, something unknown and interesting is happening. So what's happening inside the brains of football players? And could brain training help win more games? That's what we'll be hearing about in this programme.
But first, Neil, I have a question for you. As we've heard, football players have to make decisions in high-pressure situations, and their performance may be influenced by their emotional state and fear response. But which part of the brain is best known for its role in processing fear and detecting threats? Is it a. the brainstem, b. the amygdala, or c. the cerebellum?
Well, I don't know, but I'm going to guess b. the amygdala, because I like the sound of the word.
OK, well, I'll reveal the answer later in the programme. In 2014, a group of Japanese scientists studied the brain of Brazilian football star Neymar. They found that his brain was a lot less active than the brains of his peers when he rotated his right ankle. Here's Holly Bridge, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, talking about this research to the BBC World Service.
That reduction in activity in Neymar's cortex reflects that he has absolute expertise in moving his feet and it's essentially done with very, very little conscious effort.
Holly said Neymar has absolute expertise in moving his feet. Expertise means a high level of skill or knowledge gained with experience. Neymar's expertise is shown without much conscious effort. Conscious describes something done with awareness, not by accident. So, if Neymar kicks the ball without much conscious effort, he plays without thinking too much.
Decades after this research, football clubs are becoming more interested in brain data technology, even exploring whether a player's brain can be trained.
Here's Tom Cook, academy psychologist for Nottingham Forest Football Club,
What we're doing is trying to design sessions, but with cognition or neuroscience at the centre of it. So it could be something like they're not great at storing lots of information, so we're trying to overwhelm them. In a safe environment like training, that's where the development and improvement can happen to hopefully affect when they go out into games or cup competitions.
Training can help players deal with the pressures of the game. Here's Holly Bridge again talking about how emotions can affect a player's game.
A lot of performance is also driven by your emotional state. And that is something you can learn to control.
How well a player performs is driven by their emotional state. Here, driven by means influenced by or pushed forward by. Holly says that too many emotions can lead to a lack of precision and focus.
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