IF YOU want to be a professional athlete, get a grip on your emotions. Amateur golfers use their brain鈥檚 emotion centres when playing a shot, but professional golfers do not.
John Milton of the University of Chicago in Illinois and his team asked six professional women golfers and seven women amateurs to imagine approaching a tee-off to a target pin, and then take the appropriate swing. While they did this, the researchers mapped their brain activity using functional MRI, they told a meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Honolulu.
In the amateurs the scans revealed activity in limbic regions and basal ganglia, parts of the brain used for learning and emotion. In the professionals these regions remained inactive, while highly tuned neural circuits related to motor performance were the most active.
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