A Case For A New Sport Psychology: Applied Psychophysiology And Fmri Neuroscience

In this chapter I present the argument that the profession of sport psychology has failed to convince coaches, athletes and sport governing body administrators that sport psychology is a critical and essential sport science. A number of reasons contribute to this skepticism, however the major reason, in my opinion, is our inability to quantify changes in human performance that is a result of specific mental skill training. The neuroscience techniques of biofeedback, neurofeedback and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provide sport psychologists with a methodology to quantify baseline abilities in mental skills, monitor changes, and enable sport psychologists to train athletes to self-regulate their thoughts, feelings and actions. Biofeedback, neurofeedback and fMRI methodology are briefly explained along with evidence suggesting applied psychophysiology and neuroscience serve as the foundation for research and practice in sport psychology.Four decades of scientific research and practical use of psychological intervention with athletes still has many coaches and athletes skeptical about the value of sport psychology/mental training even though they readily acknowledge the importance of the mind in performance There are three major reasons for this skepticism: First, there is the misguided belief by coaches that champion athletes are born with talent and athletes either "have it or don't have it" when a championship is on the line. Apparently the decade old research by eminent psychologist Anders Ericsson (1993) and sport psychology researchers (e.g., Durand-Bush & Salmela, 1996; Starkes 1996) has not reached or convinced the coaching population. It is quite clear from this research that "deliberate" and continued practice is what explains championship behavior and not "talent" or genetics. The second reason coaches have not embraced the profession of sport psychology is that many coaches believe the mental preparation of athletes is their responsibility. Having consulting sport psychologists intervening is something many coaches are not comfortable with, although they are quite comfortable with nutrition and strength and conditioning consultants. The third reason for skepticism on the part of coaches, is not knowing whether psychological training makes a difference in the development of optimal performance because, unlike physiological training, it is difficult to see or measure quantitative differences in psychological development. However, the good news is that now we have sophisticated technology enabling us to determine what happens in the central nervous system (including the brain) and the autonomic nervous system during training and high level performance. This helps us better understand how athletes think, feel, and react prior to and during competition. These technological advances, based on neuroscience, include biofeedback / neurofeedback, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In my opinion these two areas are the next frontier for sport science and sport psychology in particular. In this chapter, I will first describe biofeedback / neurofeedback methodology and its potential for being the foundation of sport psychology practice in the future. Specifically, I will provide a brief history of biofeedback and applied psychophysiology, followed by a description of the different modalities and protocols used in sport for assessment and training, and finally evidence of recent successful application of biofeedback to sport. In the last section of the paper I will discuss the exciting new method for scientifically investigating what happens in the brain of athletes during performance-the method of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).