The effect of acute transcranial direct current stimulation on athletes' physical performance based on the neural priming technique ZHOU Zhexiao
(Faculty of Sports Science，Ningbo University，Ningbo 315211，China)
Abstract:To deeply explore the acute effects of transcranial direct current technology on the dynamic balance and sensitive response of athletes and the continuation of its effects, twenty-four national athletes or first-class male athletes were recruited. All the subjects were randomly selected to determine the type of electrical stimulation intervention (a-tDCS or s-tDCS) and the physical performance test indexes (dynamic balance, etc.). Electrical stimulation with current intensity of 2mA and 20min was arranged in M1 area of cerebral cortex, and the data of baseline, instant, 10min, 20min, 30min and 40min were collected, and the elution period between every two electrical stimulation was from 48 to 72 hours. Through SPSS software, the collected valid data was analyzed by two-factor repeated measurement ANOVA (type × time), and the results showed that all physical performance indicators had significant interaction. Simple effect analysis found that the test data of a-tDCS group at five time points after the intervention were significantly better than those of the baseline and s-tDCS group (P<0.05), and the intervention effect could last for 40 min minutes after the intervention, but s-tDCS group did not find significant improvement compared with that before the intervention. The conclusions revealed that after transcranial direct current stimulation, athletes' physical performance level such as dynamic balance, sensitive response, was obviously enhanced, which has the characteristics of quick effect and long time-effect. Given that, it can be considered to be applied to athletes' training practice or competition process.
Keywords: physical performance；tDCS；primary motor cortex；college athletes
