Effect of Brief Mindfulness and Relaxation Inductions on Anxiety, Affect and Brain Activation in Athletes

Overview

The athlete population has a high risk of suffering from mental health problems (e.g., anxiety), especially for athletes with individual sports. As such, various forms of mental training were used to maintain the mental health of athletes, such as mindfulness training or relaxation training. However, differences pertaining to the electrophysiological mechanisms resulting from both mental training in athletes are unknown. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to examine the differential effects between the brief mindfulness induction (MI) and relaxation induction (RI) on state anxiety, affect and the activation of the brain in track and field athletes.

The purposes of this study are: (1) examining the effect of brief mindfulness induction (MI) and relaxation induction (RI) on anxiety and affect in athletes with individual sports, (2) and we sought to identify the different brain activity (i.e., theta, alpha) changes between MI and RI using EEG. In the present study, subjects were contrasted using a within-subject comparison across MI, RI, and control condition. According to past works on the comparison of mindfulness and psychological skill training, we hypothesized that MI and RI would both improve anxiety and affect, compared with control condition. Furthermore, we also hypothesized that RI would elicit greater theta power (i.e., more cognitive control) than MI. In addition, when compared with control condition, participants might be elicited greater alpha power during the MI and RI.

Conditions