The brain and archers' routines: Kim 2008 study

Eight expert archers and eight beginners simulated aiming inside a functional MRI scanner. The experts (4 men and 4 women, mean age 23.62, 11.5 years of archery, scores over 330 out of 360 at 70 metres and twelve competitions a year) are described as world-class competitors or Olympic medallists; the beginners (6 men and 2 women, aged 28.62 on average) had been shooting for about a month. A target appeared on screen for 6 seconds, and they had to press a button with their right hand as soon as they felt ready to release.

Comparing aiming with rest, the experts mainly activated occipital and temporal areas linked to vision and object recognition (middle occipital gyrus, superior and middle temporal gyri). In the beginners frontal areas dominated (superior, inferior and medial frontal gyri). In the last 3 seconds of the target presentation the anterior cingulate, which the authors connect with focused attention, was active only in the experts. The posterior cingulate and the cerebellar tonsil, on the other hand, appeared only in the beginners.

The authors read this as follows: the expert would use only the visual areas needed and concentrate attention just before the shot, while the beginner, still having to decide and coordinate the movement, would recruit areas linked to self-control and emotion. That is an interpretation, not something the study measures.

Each trial began with 12 seconds of blank screen with a fixation cross, followed by 6 seconds of target, projected onto a mirror mounted on the head coil. Participants, lying down with both eyes open, had to aim as in competition and press the button within the 6 seconds when they were ready to let go of the string; there were 20 trials. A questionnaire confirmed that they had actually aimed.

The scanner was a 3 tesla unit (ISOL Technology); each volume had 30 slices, with one acquisition every 3 seconds and 122 volumes per person. The data were analysed in SPM2, comparing aiming with rest over two windows, the full 6 seconds and the last 3, and over regions of interest chosen in advance. The group comparison uses a fixed effects analysis on the eight subjects in each group, plus a random effects analysis on all sixteen, with a threshold of p < 0.01 uncorrected for multiple comparisons and a minimum of 50 voxels. Whoever analysed the images did not know which group each archer belonged to.

The groups have eight people each and the statistical threshold is not corrected for multiple comparisons: in a scan that compares tens of thousands of points in the brain, some of the reported activations may be down to chance. The fixed effects analysis also describes those eight archers more than archers in general. The two groups differ in age (23.6 against 28.6 years) and in the balance of men and women as well as in experience.

The task is a long way from shooting: lying down, without a bow, with no draw and no muscular effort, and a button press in place of the release. Response times and other behavioural data are not reported. The same research group, in its 2014 study, wrote that this block design did not separate the moment of aiming from the response time, which differed from person to person, and that the images could have been affected. The explanations based on the beginners' anxiety and tension are not measured: no anxiety questionnaire, no physiological measure. The discipline is not stated; scores out of 360 at 70 metres suggest recurve.

The study says nothing about how to aim. It describes how, during simulated aiming, an expert archer's brain relies more on visual areas and less on frontal ones, which fits the idea of a movement that over the years needs less deliberate control; but the link with automaticity is the authors' inference, not a measurement.

The finding on the anterior cingulate in the last 3 seconds is the one closest to what archers experience, because it recalls the concentration that narrows just before the release. It is not a stable marker, though: in the 2014 study the same group found it in the Olympic-level archers and in the beginners, but not in the intermediate experts. For an archer it remains background on the difference between someone with years of shooting and someone who started a month ago, obtained in conditions very different from the range.