ArticleFrontiers in human neuroscience2014
Efficient foot motor control by Neymar's brain.
Article in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
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- Corticospinal tract structure and descending motor output following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: an exploratory multimodal neuroimaging assessment.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Functional-Structural Plasticity Associated With the Duration of Sports Participation in Lower Limb Amputees: A Multimodal Neuroimaging Study.Neural plasticity · 2026Article
- Toward a dual-pathway model of neuroplastic adaptation in sport: neural efficiency and neural optimization.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
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- Functional and Structural Properties of Interhemispheric Interaction between Bilateral Precentral Hand Motor Regions in a Top Wheelchair Racing Paralympian.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Behavioral and neural underpinnings of empathic characteristics in a Humanitude-care expert.Frontiers in medicine · 2023Article
- Effective utilization of attentional resources in postural control in athletes of skill-oriented sports: an event-related potential study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Article
- Hyper-Adaptation in the Human Brain: Functional and Structural Changes in the Foot Section of the Primary Motor Cortex in a Top Wheelchair Racing Paralympian.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2022Article
- The superior response speed of table tennis players is associated with proactive inhibitory control.PeerJ · 2022Article
- Exercise Intensity and Brain Plasticity: What's the Difference of Brain Structural and Functional Plasticity Characteristics Between Elite Aerobic and Anaerobic Athletes?Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Corticospinal and spinal adaptations to motor skill and resistance training: Potential mechanisms and implications for motor rehabilitation and athletic development.European journal of applied physiology · 2021Review
- Task-Related Hemodynamic Response Alterations During Slacklining: An fNIRS Study in Advanced Slackliners.Frontiers in neuroergonomics · 2021Article
- Nonlinear engagement of action observation network underlying action anticipation in players with different levels of expertise.Human brain mapping · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
How very long-term (over many years) motor skill training shapes internal motor representation remains poorly understood. We provide valuable evidence that the football brain of Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior (the Brasilian footballer) recruits very limited neural resources in the motor-cortical foot regions during foot movements. We scanned his brain activity with a 3-tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while he rotated his right ankle at 1 Hz. We also scanned brain activity when three other age-controlled professional footballers, two top-athlete swimmers and one amateur footballer performed the identical task. A comparison was made between Neymar's brain activity with that obtained from the others. We found activations in the left medial-wall foot motor regions during the foot movements consistently across all participants. However, the size and intensity of medial-wall activity was smaller in the four professional footballers than in the three other participants, despite no difference in amount of foot movement. Surprisingly, the reduced recruitment of medial-wall foot motor regions became apparent in Neymar. His medial-wall activity was smallest among all participants with absolutely no difference in amount of foot movement. Neymar may efficiently control given foot movements probably by largely conserving motor-cortical neural resources. We discuss this possibility in terms of over-years motor skill training effect, use-dependent plasticity, and efficient motor control.
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