The Effects of audio-visual Modeling on the mu Rhythm Suppression in Basketball Lay-Up Shot

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of audio-visual modeling on mu rhythm suppression in basketball lay-up shot.

For this purpose, 13 physical education students of Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University participated voluntarily in this study. Order of presenting visual and auditory stimuli was counter-balanced among participants. Participants were randomly divided into two groups: the first group, observed the visual stimulus model first, then received the auditory stimulus, and the second group received the visual stimulus after the auditory stimulus and eventually presented the audio-visual stimuli. Brain waves were recorded by EEG in three conditions, presenting visual and auditory and audio-visual stimuli and were transformed to quantitative data by Neuro-guide Software.

Results of two-way repeated measures ANOVA in a 3 (condition) × 3(brain area) design revealed that main effect of the brain area was significant, results of Bonferroni post hoc test for brain area main effect showed that the mu rhythm was significantly more suppressed in Cz compared to C3 brain area (P=0.014). In addition, the results also showed that the mu rhythm in CZ was significantly more suppressed than C3 in both visual (P=0.025) and audio-visual (P=0.014) stimuli conditions, however, there were no significant differences between the mu rhythm Suppression in auditory condition among three brain areas.

Finally, results confirmed that the integrity of the audio-visual stimuli causes further in mu rhythm suppression and mirror neurons activation.