29 and 30 In general, athletes exhibit differences in perceptual-cognitive abilities when compared to non-athletes. For example, gymnasts outperformed non-athletes in mental rotation task and in general better for pictures of human figures http://www.selleckchem.com/products/Trichostatin-A.html than for pictures of cubed figures,31 suggesting variants of different mental rotation tasks should be applied in testing athletes, since they may have different outcomes

depending on athletes’ type of sport and/or the type of sport that is reflected in the mental rotation stimuli. Although mental rotation is developed at early stage during neuronal development period and the differences of mental rotation between athletes and non-athletes might be related to the subjects with better spatial ability, studies showed that the mental rotation is trainable for better. Therefore, this would be beneficial for our understanding of motor learning based on mental simulation and could contribute to the training of athletes from sports such as gymnastics, soccer, golf, and

more for skydiving, scuba-diving, and climbing, where losses of spatial orientation can be life-threatening.32 Exercises also have positive impact on mental rotation. A study of juggling training showed that 3 months of juggling training improved performance on a chronometric mental rotation task with cube figures, compared to a control group Obeticholic Acid ic50 which did not receive any training.33 Navigation tests, also called a way-finding, Rolziracetam are commonly conducted by having subjects reconstruct a path through a map or real space. There are two different approaches that may be involved: egocentric and allocentric strategies (Fig. 2). An egocentric strategy involves more local landmarks and directional cues as personal directions. An allocentric strategy uses the absolute position of general landmarks, such as distance,

as absolute directions.34 Individuals with hippocampal sclerosis were more impaired in navigating through a virtual maze in which learning was associated with egocentric memory. The allocentric memory impairment is found in patients with extensive hippocampal sclerosis plus subcortical deterioration, suggesting a combination of hippocampal and cortical damage is associated with negative changes in allocentric memory.35 Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy without hippocampal sclerosis do not display cognitive deficits of allocentric or egocentric memory. Although males perform better than females in the navigation strategy, the relationship between navigation and one’s level of testosterone has not been consistently demonstrated.36 and 37 It is known that men tend to favor a more allocentric strategy (accurate judgments of distance), while women are more frequently egocentric (able to recall more street names and building shapes as landmarks) navigators.