Tactical knowledge, decision-making, and brain activation among volleyball coaches of varied experience

• Autor(a) principal: Gustavo de Conti Teixeira Costa
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Henrique de Oliveira Castro, Isabel Maria Ribeiro Mesquita, José Afonso, Guilherme Menezes Lage, Herbert Ugrinowitsch, Gibson Moreira Praça, Pablo Juan Greco
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFMG
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.1177/0031512518789582; http://hdl.handle.net/1843/49269; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0911-8753; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0545-164X; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5985-9686; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8296-3676; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0317-1940; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9971-7308; http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2607-5935
• topic: Coaching experience; Cerebral blood flow; Tactics; Volleyball; Voleibol - Treinamento técnico; Circulação cerebrovascular; Voleibol - Treinadores; Tomada de decisões

This study compared decision-making (DM) of experienced and novice volleyball coaches while measuring blood flow brain activation with functional near-infrared spectroscopy. We sampled 34 coaches (mean [M] age of 32.5, standard deviation [SD] = 9.4 years) divided into two experience groups: (a) novice (M = 2.8, SD = 1.9 years) and (b) experienced (M = 19, SD = 7.2 years). We evaluated coaches’ DM through their responses to video-based scenarios of attacks performed in the extremities of the net within the Declarative Tactical Knowledge Test in Volleyball. We found no significant DM differences between the two groups of coaches (p = .063), though novice (vs. experienced) coaches showed greater blood flow of the prefrontal cortex when visualizing the game situations. While experienced coaches may have better prefrontal neural efficiency during DM in these situations, further research is needed to evaluate other cerebral areas; since blood flow is an indirect measure of neural efficiency, and activity in remaining cortical components was unknown in this study.