The influence of stress on shooting performance and cortico-cortical communication: An EEG coherence analysis

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of stress on the relationship between shooting performance and cortico-cortical communication. Participants were 16 high school 10 m air pistol athletes whose mean age of 17.8 years (M = 8, F = 8). They were asked to execute shooting under stress condition, and non-stress condition. In both conditions, competitiveness, stress, confidence and relaxation were measured and cortical activity was recorded for analysis of cortico-cortical communication. The result was that stress increased competitiveness and stress, and decreased confidence. However, there was no significant difference in shooting score between both conditions. As the result of coherence analysis, stress treatment reduces neural efficiency by decreasing communication between Cz and T4, responsible for visual-spatial processing and increasing communication between Cz and T3, associated with verbal-analytic processing. The lack of difference in shooting performance between conditions may result from failure to induce stress enough to deteriorate performance.