What happens in the brain during mental exercise?

From 18 to 23 April, a very special kind of sports event will take place at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Eight players of the Asian board game Go will compete against each other in a total of twelve games—including representatives of the European Go elite. What makes this event unique is that the players are not competing for a title, but on behalf of science.

The games are part of a globally unprecedented experiment in which psychologists from the University of Jena are observing the players' brains directly during the matches and measuring the physiological strain caused by this mental sport. They also want to find out whether men and women cope with the cognitive strain in different ways. Anyone interested can follow the matches—including brain activity—live on site and online. Go experts from the European Go Federation and psychology researchers will jointly comment on the action on the board and in the players' minds.

»In high-performance sport, people push themselves to their limits, operate at the very edge of their capacity and at times draw on their last reserves of energy. This applies to marathon runners just as much as it does to mental athletes«, says clinical psychologist Prof. Dr Ilona Croy from the University of Jena. »With our experiment, we want to find out what exactly happens in our brains during cognitively challenging situations.«

How a gaming error manifests itself in the brain

The best way to visualize this is through the oxygen consumption of the brain. In addition to sensors to record the heart rate and muscle tone in the shoulder area, the Go players are therefore fitted with electrodes on their heads during the games. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), the researchers observe how the blood flow in the brain changes and which regions of the brain are supplied with more blood and oxygen in certain game situations.

This allows them, for example, to understand what happens in our brain’s decision-making centre when a mistake is made during a game. »In every game of Go, there are turning points caused by mistakes, at which the balance of power on the board shifts«, explains Ilona Croy. »If a player makes a mistake and gets angry about it, you can see that in the brain too.« Regions responsible for emotions then consume more oxygen. As the anger subsides, more oxygen-rich blood flows back into the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the brain’s centre for thinking and planning.

World champion initiates the experiment and takes part herself

The players compete on electronic boards—the game is thus streamed live digitally and analysed by artificial intelligence. »Although this allows us to capture the course of the game and the measured data in perfect synchronisation, it does not mean that we can observe the brain’s reaction immediately after a mistake. This is because a player does not always realise straight away that they have made a mistake. That is why we interview the players separately after the match to ask how they perceived the game, thereby bridging the gap between the immediate AI analysis and the human perspective, i.e. the measured data,,« explains the study's initiator, Prof. Dr Manja Marz from the University of Jena.

The bioinformatician from the University of Jena has a keen interest in the research findings herself, as she is one of the world’s best Go players. Just a few weeks ago, she won the amateur world championship in Tokyo. She will also be sitting at the board during the experiment. »This way, I might learn how long I should wait after making a mistake before making my next move, until the rational part of my brain has regained control.«

Differences between female and male players

The two researchers are placing particular emphasis on potential gender-specific differences. As part of the University of Jena’s »Gender in Focus« project, this pilot study is the first to investigate whether men and women exhibit different patterns of neural activation and compensatory strategies during prolonged periods of peak mental performance. For this reason, men and women are competing against each other separately during the experiment.

»In both Go and chess, for example, there has long been a debate about why women do not play as well as men,« explains Manja Marz. »The most prominent explanation is that it is a statistical effect, simply because there are far fewer female players than male players. But perhaps the brains of men and women also function differently from an evolutionary perspective. It is suggested that men might be more confrontational and try to stake out territory, whilst women pay more attention to harmony and focus on ensuring that things fit together harmoniously. This may lead to different playing styles in Go.« During their experiments, the Jena team now wants to find out whether men or women are better or worse at drawing on reserves in the brain and whether they recover more quickly from cognitive strain, for example.

The Go experiment, which is the first of its kind worldwide, is likely to attract considerable interest not only in the fields of mind sports and e-sports. The research findings also provide valuable insights for professions that require sustained high levels of concentration over long periods, such as pilots and surgeons. Gender-specific findings may provide impetus for gender-sensitive performance enhancement in fields involving high mental strain.

Information about the event:

The Go experiment will take place from 18 to 23 April at the University of Jena. Interested parties can follow the encounters live on site at Inselplatz 5, room 4012, between 9.30 am and 3 pm. There, they will also have the opportunity to meet experts who will introduce them to the game of Go. The event will also be streamed live with commentary on the European Go Federation’s Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/europeangofederationExternal link