Do Superstar Athletes Have Superior Brains?

I mean this was scouts, coaches, nearly everyone. And that is until a few clubs, and especially the Oakland a started taking a much more analytical approach to how teams should be assembled, as they started looking at stats that had really kind of been ignored before or at least had taken a back seat, so things like on base percentage instead of batting average. Yeah, it was super interesting.

And if I'm remembering correctly, like in those years that the A's made it to the playoffs, they were actually spending far less than half of what the Yankees were spending on their entire club. It really was incredible and just super interesting to see how quickly that much more

analytical approach made its way into other sports like basketball. Yeah, it was well, now there's a new field that looks like it could significantly change sports again, at least according to the author of a new book called The Performance Cortex, how neuroscience is redefining athletic genius. And today we're lucky enough to be joined by the author of that book, Zach Sewan Brunn. He'll talk to us about why brains of certain great athletes like Steph Curry and Serena Williams

and Tom Brady are just so different. Because while they're obviously an incredible shape and have spent countless hours working on their craft, we know there's more to it than that. How does a great hitter master the timing of drilling a nine fastball? How did great shooters manage to make half of their three pointers? And how does a great quarterback make such split second decisions with a bunch of guys twice their size coming in for the kill. So

that's what we're talking about today. Let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Manguesh Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass holding a tennis racket in one hand as he handles the control panel, and the other that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Yeah, he's been watching Serena Williams videos all morning, just trying to match her reaction time

on service. Then he's getting pretty good. Actually, it's impressive. Yeah, it's time to sit down, Tristan. It's time to time to get focused here. So all right, Mago. As we mentioned at the top of the show, we're thrilled to be joined by the author of a new book called The Performance Cortex. How neuroscience is redefining athletic genius And as the book says, it's not about the million dollar arm anymore, It's about the million dollar brain. Zach Sean Bren,

Welcome to Part Time Genius. Thanks guys, thanks for having me so Zach, I know you've mentioned that the inspiration for this book came after your wife pointed you to this article about two neuroscientists working in Major League Baseball. Can you talk about what these guys were looking for and how this all sent you down a rabbit hole

on this topic. Yeah, yeah, it was very serendipitous. Um, you know, I had been loving through an alumni magazine and and my wife had been with me, and she noticed the small little blurb about these two Columbia University neuroscientists that were, as you said, they were starting to work in in with Major League Baseball kind of as a consulting basis, and they were still finishing up their their own neuroscience research at at Columbia. And you know,

I'm a sportswriter. I had heard a little bit about brain gaming and cognitive training in sports, and obviously mindfulness and things like sports psychologists have been around for a while, but neuroscience seemed a little different to me, you know. And they were using uh, neuroscience imaging technique called e g. Electro and cephalogram to actually figurtively peel back to the skull and see what underneath the helmets of these hitters

and how their brains are responding two pitches. Teams were really interested in this information, not just for a training purposes in terms of maybe getting hitters to improve their decision making at swinging at fastballs or curveballs or sliders, but also perhaps as a scouting method figuring out, you know, okay, what might be a baseline for what the reaction time of a major league or needs to be. You can then kind of fit other prospects or or screen for

for future players based on that kind of baseline. And so it really presented this kind of new frontier in analytics, which is obviously a big topic because this was not so much a performance training device but an analysis tool that was that was very unique. It was interesting hearing you talk about, you know, the two m VP front

runners in the American League last year. You've got jose Al Tove, who is when I think, like five ft six and maybe a hundred and sixty five pounds, and then you've got Aaron Judge, who's well over six ft six six ft seven or so two eighty two pounds, and they're both great players. But if you look at the two of them, you know, you you wouldn't know exactly what makes the two of them great because they look so different and obviously there is something different happening

in their brain. And it's just interesting to me that this hasn't really been looked at before. Well, why do you think this isn't something that's been written about or

or researched as much previously. Well, I mean, if you remember Moneyball, if remember the movie money Ball, and you remember the scouts talking of even back then about scouting players based on the good face, right and and you know what the guy was cancering where the guy had a girlfriend and uh and that was going to predict and I'll predict how they would turn out to be a major league players. And I was kind of laughed about in the movie. And some of that has changed

with still so much of scouting and analytics. In fact, all of scouting an analytics to this point is all post talc narratives that are put together after the guy swings or you know, or a dozen't swing and takes a walk, and now those stats are compiled from there, so you know, these guys were doing something that was

obviously occurring before any pitch reached home plate um. And I think you know what has taken some time for for teams to wrap their head around about this kind of technology is there's not quite enough data yet for them to say whether or not it's it's you know, useful to them. They they care about winning games. They don't want to put their players um through a lot of rigor. And you know these sorts of science, this

sorts of analysis, it takes time. You know, you have to wear any e g. Cap for forty minutes clicking on a laptop keyboard, and you know, it's not something that players obviously want to spend a lot of time doing, especially if they're not even convinced that this is going to help them. You know, coming away from this and spending time with with Jason and Jordan's, I have no doubt that this type of technologies it's as it continues to get easier and easier to use, it's going to

be more and more prevalent in in sports. Speaking of a of a different Jordan, I was actually in high school in the Birmingham area when Michael Jordan was playing for the White Sox double A team the Birmingham Barons then, and of course it was you know, a ton of hype around him being there, and it was a lot of fun to go see these games and you're talking about one of the greatest athletes and one of the greatest competitors of all time. But it never quite clicked,

you know, on the on the hitting front. And I don't know what we all expected, but you know, it was just interesting to see that it didn't quite come together in that way. And so would you say this probably did have something to do with you know, obviously there had been a lack of training over so many years, But at the same time, did he not quite have that thing or whatever that brain factor is to to have become the hitter he was hoping to be. Yeah,

that's that's exactly right. And I mean this story of Michael Jordan as a baseball player has always been remembered, as you kind of said, it's kind of an embarrassment and a failure. And and I actually think that's really not not the case, and and and probably not fair. He certainly had the athleticism. He had he had the tools physically to become a a superstar in baseball obviously. I mean, he was the greatest afflete in the world.

He had the quick hands, he had the coordination of his legs, and that's probably what enabled him to even that two hundred at the double A level, which you know, again that to me is incredible. Uh. And and that should not be perceived as a failure but really more of a marvel. But what he didn't have was what Jason and Jordan are studying, that he didn't have the decision making ability in his brain, the the regions of

his brain that are necessary for hitting. Through studies, we've sort of gotten a bit of a clue into what regions might be necessary for hitting. Those regions had not been exercised in that way in in a dozen years, and in that in that short amount of time that one summer, they weren't going to be exercised enough for him to uh for him to make the Major League. Well, I always think the same thing, that is just stunning that he was able to walk into a different sport

and compete even at that level. It's it's pretty incredible. But could you talk a little more specifically about what brain regions are crucial for baseball players. Motor studies are just inherently difficult to do if you're not taking a hitter and putting them into a batting cage. But they do try and simulate what it's like to be hitting a pitch, or at least responding to a pitch via

a video game simulation. And they were able to stick several Columbia University baseball hitters into an m r I and see what was responding in their brains as these pitches were coming. And obviously compare those anomalousies, and they found two brain regions in particular that were of interest and that we're activating or their their their neurons were responding in a way that was different than novices. And the first was the supplementary motor area. This was particularly

responsive when the hitters were deciding not the swing. And this made a lot of sense because in other studies involving the supplementary motor area, that region is particularly active in tasks where you have to inhibit your movement, such as when you just might be watching something but you're

not you're not supposed to move. And so the fact that these hitters when they're not swinging and their supplementary motor area is lighting up, it's it told the researchers that they're kind of hitters are kind of on a hairpin trigger. You know, they don't have much time to react. Obviously, they have four milliseconds, and if you want to break it down, they actually have less than that. I mean, it's it's half an eye blink. Yeah, it's incredible. And so they have to be ready to swing, you know,

at at any moment. And so what is it that might separate the good hitters from the not so good hitters, and actually might not be their ability to swing, but it might be their ability to hold off and not swing. And so, um that where the supplementary motor area comes into fla. When the hitters were responding two pitches and we're we're swinging. The other area that that lit up primarily was this place called the fusiform gyrus um, which is part of the fusiform face area. It's involved with face.

It's it's been shown another studies to be heavily involved with facial recognition. So when I am scanning a crowd, I can immediately notice my my mother's face in that crowd, you know, instantaneously, because I'm you know, I'm quote unquote an expert in seeing her face right. And so it's been shown in a lot of other studies on expertise, whether it's a bird watchers or far enthusiasts or chess players, that's the region that acts as the trigger to the

motor system to jump start in its emotion. Those were primarily the two regions of interest that they found in hitters. And I think intuitively it kind of makes some sense. Yeah, And it sounds like you have some of those same skills as well. I mean, if Alta can hit a fastball and you're using that same region of the brain to recognize your mom and a crowd, that's really impressive. So congratulations on that. All right, well, I want to talk about my favorite sport. But before we do that,

let's take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're talking about the new book, The Performance Cortex, how neuroscience is redefining athletic genius. So Zach, I'm actually eager to talk a little bit about Steph Curry because we're getting towards the end of the basketball season here. It's been an exciting one to watch. Hopefully he comes back from his injury and we'll have a really exciting playoff

season to watch. But I do want to talk about him a bit because, you know, you look at two of the greatest basketball players on the planet. You've got Lebron James, who's at six ft eight two fifty pounds, and not to take anything away from his skill, but

he's kind of a superhuman build. And then and then you take somebody like Steph Curry, and you know, if you didn't know him, and he just walked into your local pickup game, you wouldn't necessarily know that you were in the presence of maybe the greatest basketball player in the world until you saw him play, of course. And so I think he's what six ft three, not even two hundred pounds, So I'm curious, like what is going on in Curry's brain that makes him so great? Yeah, yeah,

I mean it's a great question. I wish we knew, um, because you know, obviously, you know, he he has yet to avail himself of of of any neuroscience labs, and I know that neuroscientists would love to get her hand and get their hands on him, because you know, he is a great example of this what we've been talking about, and that is that you can't necessarily judge an athlete

purely on his on his physical attributes. You know, Steph Curry coming out of college was considered too unathletic playing the NBA by scouts, and he was he dropped down and forwards because he was maybe too slow. They didn't think he can defend and um, you know, and they and they just were he was not big enough. He did not look like Lebron James, who comes to mind anytime you think about an NBA player, and yet he's been able to rise above above the rest of the league.

And I think, you know, if you were to take his his measurable still today and line them up with two other NBA guards, you wouldn't be able to pick him out of a lineup. As a sports fan, now, I've been focused my my whole life on oh the you know, the the speed, the agility, the wingspan of of of especially of NBA prospects, you know as they're coming out to all the scouts and analysts talk about and those are certainly characteristics and factors that can contribute

the performance. Don't get me wrong, but but Steph Curry is a great example of this idea that it's it's it's not everything. I remember reading this thing about Steph carry playing horse with his brother Set then is that Dell? And that the games could go on for hours because they were all such good shooters. So funny, But staying with the basketball, I'm curious, um, you know, why is it that we never see an NBA player get anywhere

to like a percent of making their free throws. It's called the charity stripe and and all that, like well, what is it about the muscle movements that that that makes this such a difficult task? Yeah, right, It always frustrates me, right that you know, these guys practice it so much and and uh, and yet they they're still unable to make a hundred, not even really get close. I think the the all time leaders is somewhere around

or something. If you want to think about our our nervous system, the connections between the brain and the musky glature, as like telephone wires, um, the signals that get sent throughout our body are inherently afflicted with some jittery no ways. What it's called. It's called neuromotor noise. This is inherent to our system. It's just the biological reality. Um, everybody, everybody has it. And it's just a function of our

systems not being perfect. You know, we're human, right. You can't make two of the same, exact, precise movements, as as much as you want to try, Um, you're not gonna make two movements of the same Nikolai Burnstein called this repetition. Without repetition, you can repeat movements that functionally look the same, such as swinging an axe and chopping a piece of wood. At all. You know, it looks the same and you will still hit the acts and the same mark, but the movement to actually get to

that point will change. Uh. And and that's that is a function of the noisiness of our system. And it's the reason we have the game of darts. Right if if if we were if we were all moving and we had no noise and we move perfectly, we wouldn't have the competition our darts because every one of our movements would just be be the same and be able to throw the dark in the same spot. And so you know, we can create robots that move without noise, but but not ourselves. We we have this um innately

in our systems. And uh, it's a it's you know, it's it's the reason that these NBA guys, no matter how much they practice um you know, they they will they're going to have different movements on on different nights, and their free throws as a results are going to change. Maybe one day, you know, it'll it'll happen because somebody will have a less less noisy system than the rest of us. But to this point it hasn't happened. Wow, that's uh, that's fascinating. To think about it. I never

thought about it that way. I will say when shock shot free throws, it did pretty much always look like the same horrible line drive form. But but I guess even with Shack and it wasn't you know, moving to a different sport, you talk about tennis stars as being math gen uses. So so why do you say that? Yeah, well, yeah, it sounds a little strange. You know, tennis tennis in particular, when you were turning a serve in times incredibly quickly, and you're not just swinging at a at a ball

that's coming in, you know, straight at you. You're also anticipating where this ball is going to have to bounce. You're anticipating what kind of bouts you're going to receive. And the more experience you have, and that's in that situation, the more accurate your probability will be. So Roger FEDERI, he's got a lot of experience and therefore he can he's going to be more accurate in in choosing the

correct response for each serve. You can effectively say that that these these tennis experts are actually using math um to to figure out where where the ball is gonna be come, which line, likely with my own perspective because I was a mediocre tennis player and a mediocre math student. So I think that that add it all, it all

makes perfect sense. Actually, there there there was one side note to that I remember, and it makes more sense now thinking about this article that I remember from our Mental Flaws days, where a reader had asked the question, you know, does it actually help a player or give them an advantage when they grunt when they hit the

tennis ball? And you know, I guess the studies were showing that that grunting actually does provide a slight advantage because it kind of muffles the sound of the ball hitting the racket, and it gives the opposing player maybe

slightly less time or slightly less information. You know, to your point, Zach, that they are kind of using all of these calculations, even unconsciously, as they hear a ball hit a racket, to then decide and that millisecond, you know where the ball may be going or how fast it may be coming to them. So you know, the next time we get out there, I think I'm probably gonna scream a lot every time I hit the ball. It's gonna be great. Well, I mean, what it comes

down to is our movement system, our motor system. It's actually costs slow, you know. And and this, this is one of the things that surprised me most is that, you know, I kind of assumed that nervous signals, um, you know, occur quickly, they happen quickly, but it actually, you know, it's actually slower than than you would think.

It takes time. And so when you're talking about responding to you know, a hundred and fifty mile an hour serve with all the pressure and and in front of in front of a stadium of a full of fans, and trying to you know, obviously hit an accurate return. You're not just trying to make contact. You have to respond, you have to return it to the right spot. And so, you know, all these things factor into the way that our brain has to make predictions about what's about to unfold.

And this this happens all the time, and it especially happens in athletes. And the more experience you have in moving and responding to the tasks that you're shown, um, the the stronger the link between perception and action might be. I'll give you an example. There's an amazing study if you're as ago at in Rome, involving a few professional

basketball players. I think they they gathered like six or eight professional Italian basketball players and they had them watch a clip of a sky shooting free throws, and they stopped the clip just as the ball was about to

be released from the player's hands. They asked these subjects that these professional players, they asked them whether that the guy made the shot, and they found that the the professional basketball players were far more accurate in predicting whether the guy was going to make or miss the chop than even coaches who were also shots clip and other experts, you know, sportswriters and fans and so on, and so what that told them is that being actively involved in

in your you know, whatever task you're trying to do, moving in that way, it actually enhances that link between your perceptual system and your motor system. You can essentially feel what you're seeing or simulate the movement that you're

supposed to be doing in response what you're seeing. Really interesting, and it speaks to the difference that these experts uh, the differences that these experts have than the novices than you or I sitting out there on the tennis courts just kind of tennis courts, just kind of reading and reacting.

It's that's not what Federer is doing. I remember reading this one thing about uh, Andre Agassi was saying that, you know, almost like a goalie in on penalty shots, for certain servers who are serving so fast, you just have to pick a side, uh, you know, you'd either

sort of prep for fourhand or back end. And he said that Boris Becker used to have a tell where he would actually stick his tongue out to the left or right side of his mouth as he was serving, and you could tell kind of where the serve was going, just which is kind of funny. Pretty great. Well, we've got a few more questions for you, Zach, but before

we get to those, let's take a quick break. I was reading recently about the Sixers who have implemented this whole chef staff to make sure that their athletes are

eating absolutely appropriately. You you see things about like Moneyball and how how teams are sort of evaluating different things to to recruit players, new metrics and stuff, and I'm sort of curious, like, how long will it be before teams start employing neuroscientists on on staff and and which sports do you see relying most on these advancements in the field. It's a good question. I mean, at this moment, almost every Major League baseball team has at least corresponded

with Decerebro. So the neuroscientists from Columbia that I that I wrote about, so Serebra would tell you that baseball is kind of the perfect fit for what they're doing because it's a single interaction. Um, it's hitter verse picture and it's swinger, don't swing, let's go or don't go, And so being able to analyze that type of interaction is a lot easier than being able to say what

Steph Curry is doing on a basketball court. Because he's got four different teammates, he's got five different opponents, He's moving in all different ways. It's a much more dynamic setting. So yeah, I think sports maybe like tennis and baseball kind of that go or no go seemed to be a better fit for for where neurosciences. You know, there was there was one more question that I wanted to ask you before we let you go, and that has to do with this idea of intelligent skin. And I

just thought this was fascinating. Whether we're talking about golf or or tennis or some of these other sports. Can you talk a little bit about this. It's something I'd really never thought about before. Yeah, yeah, me neither. Um. You know, our our our skin and our sense of touch is a very under represented area of science. The way that we kind of know that we're there's still

a lot more to learn is looking at robotics. Robot You know, engineers and neuroscientists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get robots they'll move like humans. We can get them to outthink humans. Um, I just look at how they you know they do on Jeopardy and in Chest and so on. But we haven't yet really gotten any robot that can actively move in a way that would have us be confused for

a human. And uh, you know, all you have to do is YouTube robot opening doors and you'll see, you know, how far off we are. But what they're actually missing and what they think is the next step to that realism of in robotics is the input that perception from effectively the robot's skin until we Until we get there, I think it'll be hard to get a robot to to move like us, and I think it just tells us a little bit more about how how much of our our own skin is involved in in our movement.

It's been fascinating and it's really interesting to think about how much this could change the way we think about sports and the way we think about these superstar athletes really as geniuses in their their own right. So the book is called The Performance Cortex, How neuroscience is redefining Athletic genius. But Zack, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks guys, really a lot of fun. Thanks again for listening.

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