Attention has been theorized as a system comprising three networks that can be estimated reliably by the attention network test ; the three networks are defined as alerting, orienting, and conflict control. The present study aims to identify the attention networks that are crucial for elite shooting and archery athletes and to examine whether mindfulness training can improve elite athletes' attention networks. We compared the performances in ANT between 62 elite athletes from the Chinese national team of shooting and archery (...) and 49 athletes from a provincial team in China. The results indicate three well-functioned attention networks in both groups, but elite athletes in the national team responded faster overall than athletes in the provincial team. The 62 elite athletes in the national team then received mindfulness training with varied periods ranging from 5 to 8 weeks, after which the ANT was re-administered. After mindfulness training, the elite athletes improved in orienting and conflict control networks compared with their pre-training performances. These results suggest that elite shooting and archery athletes in the national team are more efficient in all three attention networks, which means that they are able to reach the alerting state faster, make better use of environmental information, and suppress interference from distractors more efficiently. Moreover, the orienting and conflict control networks of the elite shooting and archery athletes can be improved by mindfulness training. We conclude that mindfulness practice should be considered as a useful addition to daily training for shooting and archery athletes. (shrink)

Physical and mental training are associated with positive effects on executive functions throughout the lifespan. However, evidence of the benefits of combined physical and mental regimes over a sedentary lifestyle remain sparse. The goal of this study was to investigate potential mechanisms, from a source-resolved event-related-potential perspective, that could explain how practicing long-term physical and mental exercise can benefit neural processing during the execution of an attention switching task. Fifty-three healthy community volunteers who self-reported long-term practice of Tai Chi, meditation (...) + exercise, simple aerobics, or a sedentary lifestyle, aged 47.8 ± 14.6 were included in this analysis. All participants undertook high-density electroencephalography recording during a switch paradigm. Our results indicate that people who practice physical and mental exercise perform better in a task-switching paradigm. Our analysis revealed an additive effect of the combined practice of physical and mental exercise over physical exercise only. In addition, we confirmed the participation of frontal, parietal and cingulate areas as generators of event-related-potential components commonly associated to the performance of switch tasks. Particularly, the N2-like component of the parietal and frontal domains showed significantly greater amplitudes in the exercise and mental training groups compared with aerobics and sedentary groups. Furthermore, we showed better performance associated with greater N2-like amplitudes. Our multivariate analysis revealed that activity type was the most relevant factor to explain the difference between groups, with an important influence of age, and body mass index, and with small effects of educational years, cardiovascular capacity, and sex. These results suggest that chronic combined physical and mental training may confer significant benefits to executive function in normally aging adults, probably through more efficient early attentional processing. Future experimental studies are needed to confirm our results and understand the mechanisms on parieto-frontal networks that contribute to the cognitive improvement associated with practicing combined mental and aerobic exercise, while carefully controlling confounding factors, such as age and body mass index. (shrink)