| 18 |
The “Batting eye” in actionMotor control underlies rapid decisions 
|
|---|
Baseball batters require a “batting eye” to judge whether to swing or not, and must make split-second decisions. However, how this rapid decision-making is influenced by the ability to control the bat remains unclear. This study investigated the relationship between motor control and decision-making by comparing baseball players with gymnasts. By assesing hand movements during a baseball-like hitting task involving Go/No-go decisions, we found that differences in sports expertise yielded differences in motor control ability. Notably, baseball players demonstrated a great capacity to inhibit their ongoing movement once the decision to stop was made, which may underlie their enhanced No-go performance. These findings contribute to developing training methods to enhance rapid decision-making through improved motor control. Furthermore, the resulting techniques improve athletic performance and aid in talent identification. Beyond sports, these approaches may also have broader applications in domains such as driver assistance and rehabilitation.
[1] A. Kobayashi, T. Kimura, “Compensative movement ameliorates reduced efficacy of rapidly-embodied decisions in humans,” Communications Biology, Vol. 5, No. 294, 2022.
[2] A. Kobayashi, T. Kimura, “Sport expertise-dependent movement adjustments impact Go/No-go decision in rapid hitting task,” in Proc. The 51st Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (Neuroscience 2021), 2021.
Akemi Kobayashi, Embodied Intelligence Research Group, Human Information Science Laboratory