Cognitive inhibition – the ability to filter out irrelevant information to maintain focus – is essential for maintaining emotional and mental well-being. For athletes, this skill becomes especially critical when faced with challenges like frustration or setbacks during competitive sports. Recent work by Dr. Vanika Chawla, and Dr. Caitlin Hudac offers valuable insights into connections between cognitive inhibition, brain injuries, and mindfulness practices, highlighting ways the sports community can better support brain health in young athletes.
Stanford’s research, “How Yoga Affects the Brain and Body to Reduce Stress” by MD Vanika Chawla, emphasizes the benefits of yoga and how its combination of physical movement, mindfulness, and controlled breathing have been proven to regulate stress responses in the brain and body (Shetty, 2023). Yoga achieves this by calming the autonomic nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitary axis (HPA), two stress response systems. By incorporating breathing exercises, postures, and meditation, yoga activates both top-down pathways (brain-to-body communication) and bottom-up pathways (body-to-brain communication). This form of communication helps individuals consciously relax, reducing the negative impact of stress on the body and mind.
Research shows that practicing yoga can enhance activity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the area of the brain responsible for decision-making and emotional regulation, while simultaneously modulating the amygdala, which processes emotions like fear and anger. Yoga has also been linked to a possible increase in hippocampal volume, which supports memory and learning. This can regulate the default mode network (DMN), a brain region associated with rumination and mind-wandering (Shetty, 2023). This is particularly helpful for athletes with mental health conditions, like anxiety or ADHD, as yoga’s influence on the DMN can reduce disruptive thought processes.
In Dr. Caitlin Hudac’s study, “Dynamic Cognitive Inhibition in the Context of Frustration: Increasing Racial Representation of Adolescent Athletes Using Mobile Community-Engaged EEG Methods” her and her colleagues examined how frustration induction affects cognitive inhibition in adolescent athletes using EEG (Hudac et al., 2023). They found that the induced frustration successfully disrupted cognitive inhibition, as evidenced by changes in the N2 amplitude – a neural marker of inhibition. During preseason testing, athletes showed a steady habituation of N2 amplitude during frustration, suggesting that affective interference reduced cognitive control. However, this pattern reversed in postseason testing, possibly due to a greater familiarity with the task or external situational factors - such as no longer having anticipation surrounding the upcoming season. Interestingly, athletes with a history of concussion demonstrated less disruption from frustration, while those with mental health conditions such as anxiety or ADHD showed a heightened response. As previously mentioned, yoga is an excellent coping mechanism for those with mental health conditions because of the DMN's influence on disruptive thought processes. This underscores how individual differences influence the neural response to frustration.
Parallels between mindfulness research and cognitive inhibition studies are significant and can change the way athletes are treated. Just as yoga and meditation enhance self-regulation by strengthening the prefrontal cortex, Hudac’s work reveals how frustration compromises cognitive control in the same brain region, particularly in athletes with mental health challenges. Integrating mindfulness practices into athletic training programs could provide a dual benefit: reducing the emotional toll of frustration while strengthening cognitive control. By equipping athletes with tools to manage stress and maintain focus, mindfulness not only enhances performance but also fosters a long-term mental well-being. The convergence of these studies underscores the importance in supporting the emotional and cognitive health of young athletes by utilizing a neuroscience-based and holistic approach.
References
Hudac, C. M., Wallace, J. S., Ward, V. R., Friedman, N. R., Delfin, D., & Newman, S. D. (2022). Dynamic cognitive inhibition in the context of frustration: Increasing racial representation of adolescent athletes using mobile community-engaged EEG methods. Frontiers in Neurology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2022.918075
Shetty, M. (2023, October 12). How yoga affects the brain and body to reduce stress: Stress management. Lifestyle Medicine. https://longevity.stanford.edu/lifestyle/2023/10/03/how-yoga-affects-the-brain-and-body-to-reduce-stress/
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