The University of Oregon plays football at such a frenetic pace that the Ducks' offense is called the Blur. The team, which plays in the inaugrual Pac-12 championship game this weekend, has scored touchdowns on 68 drives this season. Of those, 38 have taken two minutes or less, and 12 have lasted less than a minute. The Ducks' attack is so relentless that opponents have been know to exaggerate an injury just to slow the game down.
To play at that tempo, you have to move fast and think fast. Oregon's practices during the week are short, quick-tempo affairs designed to prepare their bodies, and now they're pursuing a mental edge as the latest school to adopt the Neurotracker training system.
Developed in the Visual Psychophysics and Perception Laboratory at the University of Montreal, Neurotracker is designed to improve reaction time and sharpen decision-making skills.
During a Neurotracker training session, a player sits in a darkened room while eight yellow spheres are projected around him in three dimensions. Suddenly, four of the spheres turn orange, and the player must follow them after they blink back to yellow and begin to move around the room for eight seconds. At the end of each test, the player tries to select which of the spheres changed colors. If he's right, they move faster on the next round; if he's wrong, they move slower.
Jean Castonguay, president and CEO of CogniSens, the company marketing the technology, explained that there are three aspects of cognitive ability important to athletic success: managing optic flow (the rapidly changing scene around you); multiple-object tracking (keeping your eyes on designated objects as they change positions); and processing biological motion (learning predictable movement patterns to avoid collisions).
By isolating one of those elements - multiple-object tracking - Castonguay believe they have found a way to make elite athletes even sharper.
"We basically train the brain to increase its ability to capture and process complex motion," Castonguay said. "Then when it gets better at doing that, it actually improves its response time. If you improve your response time, you have more time to react. Which means that an athlete will have a fraction of a second more to make a tactical decision."
Castonguay and his team turned to the sports world for one of the first commercial applications of the technology, and found a willing partner in Manchester United, one of the best-known soccer clubs in the world. While developing the system over the past two years in collaboration with Man U, the company has added professional teams in hockey, football, rugby, as well as Olympic training centers.
Dr. John Sullivan, a clinical sports psychologist who works with Providence College, the University of Rhode Island, and several professional teams, said Neurotracker works the same type of cognitive skills football players need during a game, but removes the risks of injury and fatigue.
"You're allowing situational play, which works reaction time and decision making, in a safer environment," said Sullivan, who also sits on CogniSens' sports science board. "And you're able to repeat the process in a very short amount of time. That's a key factor in a collision sport like football.
"It does no good to be able to get there and not know what to do," Sullivan adds. "And it does no good to be able to know what you're doing but not be able to get there. When you look at Neurotracker, you're really bridging that gap."
Photo: Don Ryan/AP Photo
