Sports anthropological comparison between male martial arts fighters and the students majoring in physical education

The goal of the present study is to present the differences in the body composition of male Muay Thai fighters and the students majoring in physical education. The students majoring in physical education served as a control group.The two groups (Muay Thai fighters and the students majoring in physical education) were divided into four groups: Experienced Muay Thai fighters and less experienced Muay Thai fighters as well as experienced students majoring in physical education and less experienced students majoring in physical education. The definition for “experienced” has been used when someone was engaged in sports longer than 10 hours a week.All the measurements of this study have been taken under the standardized measurement procedure by the author of this study. The results have been statistically analyzed with the program SPSS.The study shows that the experienced Muay Thai fighters are significantly smaller (the average body height of 177. 2 cm) than the experienced students majoring in physical education (the average body height 184.1).Other data in the study which used the methods developed by Conrad, Knussmann, Parnell and Heath and Carter show that, while the experienced Muay Thai fighters are significantly smaller than the other participants, they are nonetheless better trained (more muscle tissue) than their counterparts

The Individual Inclination to an Occupation and its Neuronal Correlate

Many young people decide their professional direction during adolescence. This often coincides with vulnerable phases of puberty-related maturation that is usually accompanied by difficulties in assessing one’s personal inclinations and competences. Several psychological tests have been established among teachers and career advisers serving as a tool for professional coaching the teenagers’ competences and preferences. Many tools are based on the “Theory of Vocational Personalities in Work Environment” developed by John L. Holland since the 1950s, comprising the “RIASEC” model. Today, this theory provides the basis for tests which are used and refined all over the world. Professor Stangl’s online assessable “Situational Interest Test” (SIT) is based on Holland’s theory. By means of 30 short assessments the SIT questionnaire assesses the participant’s personality traits: Realistic (“Doers”), Investigative (“Thinkers”), Artistic (“Creators”), Social (“Helpers”), Enterprising (“Persuaders”), and Conventional (“Organizers”). Modern Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is able to discriminate between the brain’s compartments as Gray and White Matter using Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM). This tool allows to reshape and to normalize human brains’ structure to statistically examining individual brains. Up to now findings from 20 years of functional MRI gave detailed insights in correlations between brain structures and mental functions. Hence, knowledge on structural base of cognitive or behavioral patterns is available as a brain’s map for assigning anatomical regions to their functions. The present study demonstrates that there are statistically relevant correlations between all dimensions of Holland’s RIASEC theory by assessing individual professional inclinations and the neuronal structures of the brain. Results show correspondence between the personality traits assigned by the RIASEC test and the functions of significant structural alterations in distinct brain areas well-known from literature

Neural Correlates of Recognition Memory in Children with Febrile Seizures: Evidence from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Febrile seizures (FS) are assumed to not have adverse long-term effects on cognitive development. Nevertheless, FS are often associated with hippocampal sclerosis which can imply episodic memory deficits. This interrelation has hardly been studied so far. In the current study 13 children who had suffered from FS during infancy and 14 control children (7 to 9-years-old) were examined for episodic and semantic memory with standardized neuropsychological tests. Furthermore, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we studied neuronal activation while the children performed a continuous recognition memory task. The analysis of the behavioral data of the neuropsychological tests and the recognition memory experiment did not reveal any between-group differences in memory performance. Consistent with other studies fMRI revealed repetition enhancement effects for both groups in a variety of brain regions (e.g., right middle frontal gyrus, left parahippocampal gyrus) and a repetition suppression effect in the right superior temporal gyrus. Different neural activation patterns between both groups were obtained selectively within the right supramarginal gyrus (BA 40). In the control group correct rejections of new items were associated with stronger activation than correctly identified old items (HITs) whereas in the FS group no difference occurred. On the background that the right supramarginal gyrus is assumed to mediate a top-down process to internally direct attention toward recollected information, the results could indicate that control children used strategic recollection in order to reject new items (recall-to-reject). In contrast, the missing effect in the FS group could reflect a lack of strategy use, possibly due to impaired recollective processing. This study demonstrates that FS, even with mainly benign courses, can be accompanied by selective modifications in the neural structures underlying recognition memory

Constitutional differences between Muay Thai fighters from Thailand and from Germany

The aim of the following study is to present the body composition of male Muay Thai fighters that were measured in Thailand and in Germany. As a control group, German college students were also measured. The three groups were separated into five different groups: experienced and inexperienced. Muay Thai fighters from Thailand were not separated since they were much more experienced, more advanced, than their German counterparts. Experienced and inexperienced were defined by the amount of training that each fighter conducted every week: Training of less than three times a week was considered as “inexperienced”. The measurements in this study were performed under a standardized method by the author. The measured results were analyzed by using Microsoft Excel 2010 and IBM SPSS 16. The results of the present study showed that the Muay Thai fighters from Thailand were significantly smaller than the German Muay Thai fighters and the college students. This study also used the methods developed by Parnell, Heath and Carter, Knussmann and Conrad. The body mass index was also used in the study

fMRI correlates of working memory: Specific posterior representation sites for motion and position information

We assume that working memory is provided by a network comprising domain-general anterior and different domain-specific posterior brain areas depending on the type of stimulus and the task demands. Based on imaging studies from perception, we hypothesized that dynamic spatial (motion) and static spatial (position) information can be dissociated during retention in working memory. Participants were presented with a moving dot. About one second after stimulus presentation, a cue indicated whether its motion or end position should be held in memory. Six seconds later, a second stimulus was shown which was to be compared with the first one with respect to identity on the cued dimension. In the baseline condition, the cue indicated that no memory task would follow. We contrasted activity during maintenance of the different features. Differential activations in regions related to motion perception (area hMT/V5+, superior temporal sulcus) were observed in the motion working memory task. For position working memory, enhanced activations in a right brain region at the temporo-parieto-occipital junction emerged. The results are discussed with respect to domain-specific regions active in perception and how they can be also involved in short term retention for those very features. It is suggested that two types of spatial information categories can be dissociated: dynamic spatial (motion) and static spatial (position) information seem to be processed by different working memory structures

Heidelberg Neuro-Music Therapy Restores Attention-Related Activity in the Angular Gyrus in Chronic Tinnitus Patients

Background: Tinnitus is the perception of a phantom sound without external acoustic stimulation. Recent tinnitus research suggests a relationship between attention processes and tinnitus-related distress. It has been found that too much focus on tinnitus comes at the expense of the visual domain. The angular gyrus (AG) seems to play a crucial role in switching attention to the most salient stimulus. This study aims to evaluate the involvement of the AG during visual attention tasks in tinnitus sufferers treated with Heidelberg Neuro-Music Therapy (HNMT), an intervention that has been shown to reduce tinnitus-related distress.Methods: Thirty-three patients with chronic tinnitus, 45 patients with recent-onset tinnitus, and 35 healthy controls were tested. A fraction of these (21/21/22) were treated with the “compact” version of the HNMT lasting 1 week with intense treatments, while non-treated participants were included as passive controls. Visual attention was evaluated during functional Magnet-Resonance Imaging (fMRI) by a visual Continous Performance Task (CPT) using letter-based alarm cues (“O” and “X”) appearing in a sequence of neutral letters, “A” through “H.” Participants were instructed to respond via button press only if the letter “O” was followed by the letter “X” (GO condition), but not to respond if a neutral letter appeared instead (NOGO condition). All participants underwent two fMRI sessions, before and after a 1-week study period.Results: The CPT results revealed a relationship between error rates and tinnitus duration at baseline whereby the occurrence of erroneous “GO omissions” and the reaction time increased with tinnitus duration. Patients with chronic tinnitus who were treated with HNMT had decreasing error rates (fewer GO omissions) compared to treated recent-onset patients. fMRI analyses confirmed greater activation of the AG during CPT in chronic patients after HNMT treatment compared to treated recent-onset patients.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that HNMT treatment helps shift the attention from the auditory phantom percept toward visual cues in chronic tinnitus patients and that this shift in attention may involve the AG

Heidelberg Neuro-Music Therapy Enhances Task-Negative Activity in Tinnitus Patients

Background: Suffering from tinnitus causes mental distress in most patients. Recent findings point toward a diminished activity of the brain's default-mode network (DMN) in subjects with mental disorders including depression or anxiety and also recently in subjects with tinnitus-related distress. We recently developed a therapeutic intervention, namely the Heidelberg Neuro-Music Therapy (HNMT), which shows an effective reduction of tinnitus-related distress following a 1-week short-term treatment. This approach offers the possibility to evaluate the neural changes associated with the improvements in tinnitus distress. We previously reported gray matter (GM) reorganization in DMN regions and in primary auditory areas following HNMT in cases of recent-onset tinnitus. Here we evaluate on the same patient group, using functional MRI (fMRI), the activity of the DMN following the improvements tinnitus-related distress related to the HNMT intervention.Methods: The DMN activity was estimated by the task-negative activation (TNA) during long inter-trial intervals in a word recognition task. The level of TNA was evaluated twice, before and after the 1-week study period, in 18 treated tinnitus patients (“treatment group,” TG), 21 passive tinnitus controls (PTC), and 22 active healthy controls (AC). During the study, the participants in TG and AC groups were treated with HNMT, whereas PTC patients did not receive any tinnitus-specific treatment. Therapy-related effects on DMN activity were assessed by comparing the pairs of fMRI records from the TG and PTC groups.Results: Treatment of the TG group with HNMT resulted in an augmented DMN activity in the PCC by 2.5% whereas no change was found in AC and PTC groups. This enhancement of PCC activity correlated with a reduction in tinnitus distress (Spearman Rho: −0.5; p < 0.005).Conclusion: Our findings show that an increased DMN activity, especially in the PCC, underlies the improvements in tinnitus-related distress triggered by HNMT and identify the DMN as an important network involved in therapeutic improvements