Neuropsychological Study on the Effects of Boxing Upon Athletes' Memory

Teng, Y, Yu, Q, Yu, X, Zhan, L, and Wang, K. Neuropsychological study on the effects of boxing upon athletes' memory. J Strength Cond Res 36(12): 3462-3467, 2022-This study attempts to explore the impairment of athletes' memory caused by 1 year of boxing training according to the n-back test and Chinese auditory learning test (CALT). Accordingly, 58 new athletes were prospectively analyzed from a sports school, where 28 athletes who received boxing training were regarded as the exposed group and 30 athletes who received matched training were taken as unexposed group for a duration of 1 year. All subjects respectively completed an n-back test (to test working memory) and a CALT test (to test short-term memory and long-term memory) before and after the training. During the tests, accuracy and reaction time from the n-back test and the correct number from CALT were recorded. The accuracy of the boxing group was observed to be lower than that of the matched group in the 2-back test (p < 0.05), whereas the reaction time of the boxing group was longer than that of the matched group (p < 0.05) after a year of boxing practice. The results of CALT1 (short-term memory), CALT8 (long-term memory), and CALT9 (recognition memory) were lower in the boxing group than that in the matched group after a year (p < 0.05). The results suggest that exposure to 1 year of boxing training can impair the boxers' working memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Therefore, boxers should strengthen their head protection during training to avoid frequent impacts to the head.