Monthly Archive for August, 2013

20.000 hours to map a minimum section of mouse brain

“Scientists have mapped the dense interconnections and neuronal activity of mouse and fruitfly visual networks. The research teams, whose work is published in three separate studies today in Nature1–3, also created three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions, shown in the video above.

All three studies interrogate parts of the central nervous system located in the eyes. In one, Moritz Helmstaedter, a neurobiologist at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany, and his collaborators created a complete 3D map of a 950-cell section of a mouse retina, including the interconnections among those neuronal cells. To do so, the team tapped into the help of more than 200 students, who collectively spent more than 20,000 hours processing the images1.” Watch the video on Nature

Negative self-talk can be motivating

At 35 years old Tommy Haas is the oldest tennis player at the U.S. Open. How did a player of this age do to maintain a mental approach so effective that it is still 13 in the world? A video of 2007 during the quarterfinals of the Australian Open opens a window on his thoughts in a very stressful moment. In fact, the video shows the Tommy Haas self talk during a break. Dialogue mainly negative and offensive to himself but with some positive statements almost exclusively centered on the result to get (do not go to the net, you can win, you will win the match, you cannot lose it, fight). In this case, the system that Haas has used with himself was useful as he won that match. Sport psychologists emphasize the importance of having a positive dialogue with yourself, centered not on the result to be achieved but on the actions to be performed. Although it is important to teach this positive approach to young people, in my work I have lived many situations where the negative dialogue has served as a motivational drive to provide the best performance. I met athletes in the break between two trials or before a final passing long minutes to insult themselves as Haas and then at some point ask: “Tell me something positive” and some times I talked about the sacrifices that had done to get to that point and other times of the obstacles and races who had won for being there, at that point they changed attitude and said: “Now go and do it” rather than “Ok! I will give my best.” They are almost always kept their word.

In the life leave a positive trail

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The unwritten rules of the refereeing

The referee job  is subject to certain unwritten rules of the football world that tend to keep to a critical level the perception that fans and the wider public show toward this activity: These rules are as follows:

  • Since the dawn, sport has been a social phenomenon in which there has always been a symbiotic relationship between athletic performance and spectators, and it must be remembered that the early events of which we have knowledge date back to 5.220 bc. It means that spectators have always sided with the athletes who competed for  the different groups.
  • Football is a ritualized version of the hunt, where players are the hunters, the weapon is the ball, the prey is the gate and the referee is the tribal judge on which no one can interfere when taking a decision.
  • The decision of an referee  is against the interests of the other. Whenever the referee communicate a decision, half of the players, the coach and the audience feel some form of disappointment. This is at every level the nature  of competitive sport.
  • The reactions of the players to assigning a negative decision for them are significantly influenced by the communication style of  the referee in that situation
  • The perception of the referee’s fairness  by the public and players is extremely important, but in football this type of perception is also strongly influenced by the expectations towards the referee, for example, know that he is a referee who never gives a penalty against the home team in the last five minutes of the match.
  • The perception of referee’s fairness depends on how the players shall evaluate his competence level, independence of judgment and respect for the teams.

The referee mistakes

Start a new season in football as for the other team sports, and referees play a vital role for the proper running of the championships. To the umpires does not like to be told that they can make mistakes for excessive personal arrogance or  subordination to the teams and players. I’m not talking about technical incompetence, because in this case the mistake is not so much the referee showing this difficulty, but rather of those who have designated him for that game. On the contrary, even the most experienced international referee can make mistakes due to an excess of will to impose himself or viceversa due to an excessive caution in respect of the home team or  the most famous players. Errors of presumption or subjection toward the opponents are also showed by the high-level teams, because they are part of those behaviors in which anyone can fall when the competitive tension is very intense. The referees and their managers should not therefore deny this kind of errors, because they can occur even in the most competent people. The referees should be trained to recognize when these attitudes begin to appear in their behaviors on the field, so as to correct them immediately. A rule that I would like to transmit to the referees is to never deny themselves a difficult time but instead to recognize it as soon as possible and change their behaviors in a positive way.

Is it possible to become golfer professional starting at 30 years old?

At what point is the challenge of Dan McLaughlin. Never having played 18 holes of golf, in April 2010, McLaughlin quit his job as a commercial photographer to pursue a goal of becoming a top professional golfer through 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. During the first 18 months, improvement was slow as McLaughlin first practiced his putting, chipping, and his drive. Then, as he began to put the various pieces together, improvement accelerated, consistent with hyper-growth behavior. While he didn’t track how quickly his handicap decreased, 28 months into the project, he has surpassed 91% of the 26 million golfers who register a handicap with the US Golf Association database. Not surprisingly, his rate of improvement (if measured as handicap) is now slowing as he faces competition from the top 10% amateur golfers (5,8 handicap). After three years of practice McLaughlin is in the middle of  his journey, he played for about 5.500 hours and he has the same time to satisfy the 10.000 rule of deliberate practice needed to reach the excellence for the psychologist Anders Ericcson. His goal is to become in this time a professional golfer. This Laughling choice is very interesting and till now unique in sport, because it is the first time that a single individual, with no previous sport experiences as athlete, not young but adult, tries to show that the excellence can be achieved only through the persistent commitment  of deliberate practiced

When the goals are decisive in football

The results of a study that I conducted on three Serie A championships showed that the last half hour of play is not only the period in which they are made ​​scored more goals (68% of the total) but it is also the phase where 44.2% of goals are decisive for the final result. In contrast, only 16.3% of decisive goals are carried out in the first half.

In this first day of this football season (still waiting for the today last game ), this data is only partially confirmed. In fact, out of 19 marked, 7 goals are in the period between 61 and 75 minutes and only 1 in the last quarter of the second time. At present these data gives only what it has happened in the first championship day but in the course of the year they will be taken into account, to see if there will be a change in the teams in terms of mentality and physical preparation to reduce the percentage of the decisive goals scored in  the final period of the match, goals that as we approach the end of the game and the physical and mental fatigue are increased are more difficult to recover.

17 classic US Open moments

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It’s a new football season: win who will manage the emotion

 

It starts a new football season, this year even more important because it will end with the World Cup in Brazil. There is therefore a further reason for the players to want to play your best, with the aim to be among the 22-man squad for the World Cup in South America. In any event, each team will have its goal to be achieved: for some will not go back, for others to get into the UEFA  or confirm the result of the previous season, for others it will be to win the championship or play the Champions League. Beyond the technical and tactical level possessed, each team will show its value only if the players on the field, the bench, the coach and the president will demonstrate a high level of emotional control. The management of the competitive stress affects everyone, without exception. In Italy we were often champions of stress. We have the record of coaches fired during the championship by presidents who can not contain their fears or their wounded narcissism also by a few negative results. We are also a League where the players make too many fouls and it is not true that the players would not be able to avoid them, because when they play at the European level they did less. In Italy they feel free to not respect the rules, protected by fans, coaches and presidents always ready to blame the referees,  to talk about a conspiracy against their team or to not have understood that football permit the physical contrasts. The coaches knowing that half of them during the championship will be probably fired risk to live in a dramatic way the negative results of their team, for many it is a temporary job, certainly very well paid, but risky as climbing an eight thousand knowing the number of victims it kills every year. Despite these uncertainties, however, it’s absolutely necessary that the protagonists of football know to keep a cool head, reminding themselves the team’s objectives and how to achieve them. Self-control, effective stress management, aggression loyal and respectful of the opponents must be the basis of the behavior on the field, in other words it means knowing how to manage the emotions in a context, the match, which itself is a highly emotional situation. Therefore the teams have to live for 90 minutes this mental condition showing able to manage it effectively. This is in my opinion the challenge that each team must prepare to face and win each match, as well as the final result.

Read on  http://www.huffingtonpost.it/../../alberto-cei/al-via-la-serie-a-una-sfida-alle-emozioni_b_3805629.html