Mind Games

Mental practice can be so real as to be exhausting. Diver Davison, 20, knows how that goes. At night she takes long walks, rehearsing each dive in her head. "I picture the perfect dive," she says. "I'm actually tired afterward, from all the visualization."

That undoubtedly reflects the intense concentration that mental practice requires. All the effects of mental workouts, from brain activations to finger strengthening, occur only if the imaging is accompanied by intense concentration. Attention matters. It can literally "sculpt brain activity by turning up or down the rate at which particular sets of synapses fire," Robertson writes in his book. "And since we know that firing a set of synapses again and again makes the [neuronal circuit] grow bigger and stronger, it follows that attention is an important ingredient." Attending to one sense also dampens activity in brain regions responsible for other senses, and perhaps for other actions. That's why tuning out the crowd might improve performance: the brain may have more energy to attend to movement if it is not processing sound. Tara Nott is counting on it. When she steps up to the weight, she says, "I walk behind it and I stand there and I close my eyes. I just take a deep breath. I don't see anything in front of me. I don't see the judge. I don't see the people in the stands. I can hear 'C'mon, Tara!' but it's mostly a blur."

Even the hoary notion that practice makes perfect has found a solid basis in neurobiology. As you progress in skill, "there's less for you to consciously attend to or think about," says sports psychologist and kinesiologist John Raglin of Indiana University. As a result the stroke, the swing or the jump becomes automatic. In fact, neuroscientists find that the more one practices a series of precise movements, the lower the brain activity often required to execute them. Let the mind games begin.

Bret Begun

© 2000