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In beginners the score improves with a leftward shift of theta activity, not with the amount of brain activity

1 study · 11 archers measured

ForContextAgainst2022202420262022, for, n = 112022, context, n = 11
Each circle is a study: its position gives the year, its row whether it is for, against or context, its size how many participants it measured. Light circles are studies on other populations or without archers.

A single German study has followed the brain of people learning to shoot. Eleven right-handed adults with no archery experience, mean age 33, shoot a hundred arrows a day for three days at eight metres with a 14-pound recurve, coached by an experienced archer, while a sixty-four-channel EEG records the aim. The score rises, but not by much: on average 1.18 points per arrow from the first day to the third. The power of theta, alpha and beta waves does not change across sessions and is not linked either to the score or to the improvement; what is linked to the gain is the shift of theta lateralisation towards the left hemisphere in the half second before the release, significant in seven regions, led by the supplementary motor area. The areas most active during aiming, moreover, are not the ones whose shift predicts improvement. The finding separates two things that are often confused, how much activity there is and how it is distributed, but it has to be read for what it is: an exploratory study of eleven people over three days with no comparison group, and a coefficient that applies to a complete shift from neutral to fully left, far larger than anything anyone achieves in three days. Nobody has looked for it in trained archers.

Also phrased as: "eeg and learning to shoot"; "theta waves and score"; "brain lateralisation in archery"; "the beginner's brain while aiming"; "theta waves and learning"; "the brain of someone learning to shoot"; "a brain marker of progress"; "theta lateralisation"

In practice

People say a good archer has a quieter brain while aiming, with less activity, and that learning to shoot means switching off what is not needed.

Evidence

  • 2022
    For Archers Published later

    11 beginners, three sessions of 100 arrows at 8 m with a 64-channel EEG: in the window from 700 to 200 ms before the release, the leftward theta shift is linked to improvement in 7 regions after FDR correction, with mixed-model coefficients of 10.36 (95% CI 6.16-14.56; p=0.002) in the supplementary motor area and 7.03 (3.68-10.39; p=0.006) in the paracentral lobule (p. 29, Table 2). The coefficient applies to a complete shift from neutral to fully left, whereas the actual mean gain between the first and third day is 1.18 points per arrow (p. 28). The areas of maximum power do not coincide with those of strongest association (pp. 29-30).

    Archery under the (electroencephalography-)hood: Theta-lateralization as a marker for motor learning · Stefan Rampp, Kai Spindler, Gesa Hartwigsen, Christian Scheller, Sebastian Simmermacher, Maximilian Scheer, et al.

  • 2022
    For Archers Published later

    Absolute power, the difference in power from the first day and absolute lateralisation show no significant association with the score or with improvement (linear mixed model, FDR-corrected p values); alpha gives much weaker associations and beta none after correction (p. 29). What counts is the shift from one session to the next, not how much activity there is.

    Archery under the (electroencephalography-)hood: Theta-lateralization as a marker for motor learning · Stefan Rampp, Kai Spindler, Gesa Hartwigsen, Christian Scheller, Sebastian Simmermacher, Maximilian Scheer, et al.

  • 2022
    Context Archers Published later

    11 healthy right-handed adults with no archery experience, mean age 33, 14-pound recurve, coached by an experienced archer: over three days of practice the power of theta, alpha and beta waves during aiming does not change across sessions in any band (cluster-based permutation statistics, all p above 0.1; p. 28). The score rises from day to day (Friedman p=0.02), and the improvement within a session is largest on the first day.

    Archery under the (electroencephalography-)hood: Theta-lateralization as a marker for motor learning · Stefan Rampp, Kai Spindler, Gesa Hartwigsen, Christian Scheller, Sebastian Simmermacher, Maximilian Scheer, et al.

Status history

  1. 2022 Reported The first and only study: eleven adults with no experience shoot a hundred arrows a day for three days wearing a sixty-four-channel EEG, and the score rises by little more than a point per arrow. The absolute power of theta, alpha and beta does not change across sessions and is not linked to the score; what is linked to improvement is the shift of theta lateralisation to the left, in seven regions, led by the supplementary motor area. The areas most active during aiming are not the ones whose shift predicts the gain. They are beginners learning to shoot, archers at their first arrows, in an exploratory study with no comparison group: reported.

Related

Related articles

Research lines

Cite
APA

Campagna, M. (2026). In beginners the score improves with a leftward shift of theta activity, not with the amount of brain activity (Version 2). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/theta-lateralisation-beginners-score

BibTeX
@misc{campagna2026_lateralizzazionethetapunteggio,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {In beginners the score improves with a leftward shift of theta activity, not with the amount of brain activity},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/theta-lateralisation-beginners-score},
  note = {Version 2; accessed 2026-10-16}
}

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