Former Major League Baseball (MLB) players and athletic identity

At the height of their professional careers, Major League Baseball (MLB) players are considered the best in the world at their sport. For these men, athletic identity is the dominating force in their lives, yet all MLB players must eventually retire from the sport that has defined their lives for so long. Transition into retirement is difficult for players who have never considered a life without playing baseball. The purpose of this research was to examine perceptions of athletic identity among former MLB players and to gain insight into both the positive and negative aspects of their transition into retirement. The literature review examined theories in identity studies and a concurrent mixed-methods approach was used to collect and analyze data from members of the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association (MLBPAA). A sample of 194 participants completed an online survey based on the Third Version of the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale Plus (AIMS-Plus), which also included additional demographic and open-ended questions to determine the participant’s age, the number of years of service in the MLB, level of education, income, marriage status, if they still have injuries related to their MLB career, if they still consider themselves baseball players, and if they secured employment after their retirement. Ten “high identity loss” participants, and ten chosen “low identity loss” participants were selected for in-depth interviews. Analysis of the survey and coded interviews revealed that MLB players experience sudden identity foreclosure and identity loss upon retirement; former players have strong crossover qualities that carry over into their careers after retirement; the timing of and years in retirement has an effect on perception of identity; and former players can adapt to reconstruct their identities around other important aspects of their lives such as family and new career opportunities. The implications of the study suggest that maintaining a connection to baseball and acknowledging crossover qualities early in their career can help athletes transition more smoothly into retirement. Further, maintaining strong relationships with family and considering career planning early in their MLB careers could help players cope with identity loss during retirement.Curriculum and Instructio

Electrophysiological Signatures of Spatial Boundaries in the Human Subiculum.

Environmental boundaries play a crucial role in spatial navigation and memory across a wide range of distantly related species. In rodents, boundary representations have been identified at the single-cell level in the subiculum and entorhinal cortex of the hippocampal formation. Although studies of hippocampal function and spatial behavior suggest that similar representations might exist in humans, boundary-related neural activity has not been identified electrophysiologically in humans until now. To address this gap in the literature, we analyzed intracranial recordings from the hippocampal formation of surgical epilepsy patients (of both sexes) while they performed a virtual spatial navigation task and compared the power in three frequency bands (1-4, 4-10, and 30-90 Hz) for target locations near and far from the environmental boundaries. Our results suggest that encoding locations near boundaries elicited stronger theta oscillations than for target locations near the center of the environment and that this difference cannot be explained by variables such as trial length, speed, movement, or performance. These findings provide direct evidence of boundary-dependent neural activity localized in humans to the subiculum, the homolog of the hippocampal subregion in which most boundary cells are found in rodents, and indicate that this system can represent attended locations that rather than the position of one\u27s own body

Electrical Stimulation Modulates High γ Activity and Human Memory Performance.

Direct electrical stimulation of the brain has emerged as a powerful treatment for multiple neurological diseases, and as a potential technique to enhance human cognition. Despite its application in a range of brain disorders, it remains unclear how stimulation of discrete brain areas affects memory performance and the underlying electrophysiological activities. Here, we investigated the effect of direct electrical stimulation in four brain regions known to support declarative memory: hippocampus (HP), parahippocampal region (PH) neocortex, prefrontal cortex (PF), and lateral temporal cortex (TC). Intracranial EEG recordings with stimulation were collected from 22 patients during performance of verbal memory tasks. We found that high γ (62-118 Hz) activity induced by word presentation was modulated by electrical stimulation. This modulatory effect was greatest for trials with poor memory encoding. The high γ modulation correlated with the behavioral effect of stimulation in a given brain region: it was negative, i.e., the induced high γ activity was decreased, in the regions where stimulation decreased memory performance, and positive in the lateral TC where memory enhancement was observed. Our results suggest that the effect of electrical stimulation on high γ activity induced by word presentation may be a useful biomarker for mapping memory networks and guiding therapeutic brain stimulation