Sport performances are often showcases of skilled motor control. Efforts to understand the neural processes subserving such movements may teach us about general principles of behavior, similarly to how studies on neurological patients have guided early work in cognitive neuroscience. While investigations on non-human animal models offer valuable information on the neural dynamics of skilled motor control that is still difficult to obtain from humans, sport sciences have paid relatively little attention to these mechanisms. Similarly, knowledge emerging from the study of sport performance could inspire innovative experiments in animal neurophysiology, but the latter has been only partially applied. Here, we advocate that fostering interactions between these two seemingly distant fields, i.e., animal neurophysiology and sport sciences, may lead to mutual benefits. For instance, recording and manipulating the activity from neurons of behaving animals offer a unique viewpoint on the computations for motor control, with potentially untapped relevance for motor skills development in athletes. To stimulate such transdisciplinary dialog, in the present article, we also discuss steps for the reverse translation of sport sciences findings to animal models and the evaluation of comparability between animal models of a given sport and athletes. In the final section of the article, we envision that some approaches developed for animal neurophysiology could translate to sport sciences anytime soon (e.g., advanced tracking methods) or in the future (e.g., novel brain stimulation techniques) and could be used to monitor and manipulate motor skills, with implications for human performance extending well beyond sport.

中文翻译：

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运动大脑的未来肖像：通过运动行为的动物神经生理学对人类运动表现的机械理解


体育表演通常是熟练运动控制的展示。努力理解促进此类运动的神经过程可能会告诉我们行为的一般原理，类似于对神经病患者的研究如何指导认知神经科学的早期工作。虽然对非人类动物模型的研究提供了有关熟练运动控制的神经动力学的有价值的信息，但这些信息仍然很难从人类那里获得，但运动科学对这些机制的关注相对较少。同样，运动表现研究中产生的知识可以激发动物神经生理学的创新实验，但后者仅得到部分应用。在这里，我们主张促进动物神经生理学和运动科学这两个看似遥远的领域之间的相互作用，可能会带来互惠互利。例如，记录和操纵行为动物神经元的活动为运动控制的计算提供了独特的视角，对于运动员运动技能的发展具有潜在的未开发的相关性。为了激发这种跨学科对话，在本文中，我们还讨论了将运动科学发现逆向转化为动物模型的步骤，以及评估特定运动的动物模型和运动员之间的可比性。在本文的最后部分，我们设想为动物神经生理学开发的一些方法可以很快（例如，先进的跟踪方法）或在未来（例如，新颖的大脑刺激技术）转化为运动科学，并且可以用于监测和操纵运动技能，对人类表现的影响远远超出了运动范围。