Objective: 

Since visual attention is important for the activities of the dance and sport, the main aim of this study was to investigate visual cognitive responses of professional dancers and sportsmen.

Methods: 

Ten healthy right-handed professional modern dancers and 10 basketball player participated in this study (5 female, 5 male; mean age: 24.7±1.2). Electroencephalographic (EEG) activity was recorded from 19 sites with MITSAR. Since, the P300 component of the Event Related Potentials (ERPs) can be used to identify cognitive functions as attetion, Visual Oddball Paradigm (VERPs; P300 Paradigm) applied to dancers and sportsmen. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS-PC 16.0 (Repeated Measured ANOVA).

Results: 

In VERPs paradigm, P300 responses of professional dancers had larger in amplitude than of sportsmen especially for the Fz, F4 and C4 locations. The P300 responses of the sportsmen had larger amplitude than of dancers for the F3, C3, Cz, P3, Pz, P4, O1 and O2 locations. The channel effect was significantly different between dancers and sportsmen [F(18,198)=31,09; p<0.0001]. The group x channel effect was different statistically [F(18,198)=2,06; p<0.008]. There is no any significant difference for the latency of P300 responses between the dancers and sportsmen. The cognitive responses of the dancers were higher in sportsmen for the anterior-right locations. On the other hand, the cognitive responses of sportsmen were higher than in dancers for the anterior-left and posterior locations of brain.

Conclusions: 

The present study is important to demonstrate the electrophysiological differences of the visual cognitive functions between dancers and sportsmen.