Investigating the Alpha Power in Successful and Unsuccessful Free Throws of Elite and Novice Basketball Players

This study aimed to investigate alpha power in successful and unsuccessful free throws of elite and novice basketball players.

The current research was quasi-experimental and was implemented in a time series design. Two Elite (10 participants with a mean age of 22.25 ± 1.34) and Novice (10 participants with a mean age of 22.55 ± 1.80) groups participated voluntarily. The data were measured using 28 electrodes from a 32-channel wireless device and were analyzed using the repeated measures analysis of variance test (p≥0.05).

The alpha power of the elite group was higher than the novice group (P=0.001). The successful throws showed lower alpha power than unsuccessful throws (P=0.006). In the comparison of the two groups, the alpha power in the unsuccessful throws of the elite group was higher than in their successful throws (p=0.001), but no difference was observed between the alpha power of the successful and unsuccessful throws of the novice group (p=0.584). The alpha power during the execution time of the free throw task was higher than the pre-execution time (p<0.005), but there was no difference between the first and second pre-execution times (p=1.000). The results of the present study showed that the elite group had higher cortical activity than the novice group in all electrodes (p<0.001).

The findings show that the elite group performed the task with less cortical complexity by inhibiting irrelevant information. In addition, the decrease in alpha power in successful throws indicates an increase in activation of cerebral cortex and an increase in concentration, so that the task can be performed with fewer neural resources.