Sport|A female athlete often feels awkward when her period starts. However, in the British study, women’s information processing performance was at its peak during menstruation
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
During menstruation, a woman’s reaction time speeds up and errors decrease.
A study by University College London investigated the brain abilities of female athletes.
The data processing performance of women was at its peak in the tests during menstruation.
The results challenge perceptions of women’s abilities at a certain time of the month.
When a woman is menstruating, her reaction times speed up.
During menstruation, women also make fewer mistakes than usual in tests that measure mental and motor performance.
At the same time, however, a woman herself may feel that her performance suffers when she compares what she is doing to other phases of her menstrual cycle.
The brain abilities of female athletes were investigated by a University College London study. More than 240 athletes participated in it.
It originally tried to find out why female athletes are more injured during sports than men.
Sports researcher Flaminia Ronca and groups recruited more than 150 female athletes for the study.
105 of the female athletes were menstruating during the test. 47 of the women reported that they use contraception. They were the comparison group. There were 96 men in the crowd.
The tests mimicked what is required of the athletes’ brains during sports performance. Experience your measurements, for example, reaction time and the ability to anticipate movement.
The experiment was repeated two weeks later. On the test days, the women reported the stage of their periods.
The participants also filled out a form asking about their moods.
The result was surprising. The data processing performance of women was at its peak in the tests during menstruation.
Accelerated thinking has an effect, at least in those sports where precision is required even on a millisecond time span. This is how Ronca explains website according to Science Alert.
The discovery challenges perceptions of what women themselves and society in general assume about women’s abilities at a certain time of the month, comments Ronca on the results newspaper for The Guardian.
However, the same female athletes generally felt worse than usual when their period started. They believed that mood negatively affects sports performance.
Female athletes often report that they feel awkward around the beginning of ovulation.
This is a common perception. Therefore, female athletes sometimes try to influence the menstrual cycle or postpone menstruation during important sports performances.
“How you feel doesn’t always affect your performance,” says Ronca in the Guardian.
The effect of accelerated information processing on sports performance is unclear, as endurance usually decreases during menstruation.
The study could not find out individual differences in cognitive abilities in different phases of the menstrual cycle.
There were no big differences in the reaction times and accuracy of male and female athletes in the test.
Women’s the popularity of the sport is growing. Women’s injuries in sports have been talked about more and more. For example, women have more knee injuries than men.
Accelerated visualization of the state can also increase injuries, especially if the performance of one’s sport is very fast-paced.
In sports, there has been little research into how a change in hormone levels enhances or inhibits the brain function of a professional athlete.
Sports researchers have focused more on the biomechanics of the female body. The menstrual cycle affects ligaments, for example.
NOW researchers are trying to find out how the hormones contained in the contraceptive affect the athlete’s brain.
There is usually a clear difference in women’s hormone levels during the different phases of the menstrual cycle.
The study was published by scientific journal Neuropsychologia.