Cognitive Neuroscience in Alpine Skiing: Introducing Computational Sports Medicine for Performance Optimization.

🤖 Plain-English Summary

While sport psychology has long emphasized mental and cognitive aspects of performance, sports medicine has traditionally focused on musculoskeletal and physiological aspects, largely overlooking the brain's central role in athletic performance. The review primarily targets elite and sub-elite athletes, for whom cognitive and environmental demands are most pronounced.

🔑 Key Findings

• This narrative review aims to bridge this gap by introducing Computational Sports Medicine, a novel framework that integrates cognitive neuroscience with established physiological and biomechanical measures.
• Using alpine skiing as a primary example, this review examines the critical role of working memory updating in dynamic environments, discusses how neural processes enable adaptation, and proposes Computational Sports Medicine as a unifying predictive framework.
• This approach moves beyond descriptive analysis to provide objective, quantifiable metrics, testable models, and the ability to simulate "what-if" scenarios for proactive intervention.

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