Players make unforced errors due to spontaneous brain activity

WASHINGTON: Spontaneous fluctuations of electrical activity within the brain lead to professional basketball and tennis players missing an easy shot or two, a new study says.
 
A team of researchers at the Washington University led by Michael Fox found that fluctuations in brain activity caused volunteers to subconsciously exert slightly less physical force when pressing a button on cue.
 
Spontaneous brain activity explains why people engaging in sports sometimes miss an apparently easy shot or basket, by altering the force with which they throw or hit a ball, they say.
 
According to them, the first direct evidence that internal instabilities - so-called spontaneous brain activity - may play an important role in the variability of human behaviour.
 
The team designed an experiment involving monitoring volunteers' brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging as it performed a simple finger-tapping task, New Scientist reports.
 
As many as 17 volunteers were asked to push a button with their right hand as soon as they saw an on-screen prompt and the timing and force of each button press were recorded.

The brain scans revealed increased activity within the left motor cortex the region associated with controlling movement of the right hand  shortly after each button-pushing prompt.