Mental Performance Consultants' Perspectives on Content and Delivery of Sport Psychology Services to Masters Athletes.

In the absence of sport psychology resources for Masters Athletes, mental performance consultants could benefit from information to assist consultancy with older adult athletes. We conducted semistructured interviews to explore 10 Canadian professional mental performance consultants' (two men and eight women) perspectives of targeted content and the nature of service delivery to Masters Athletes. Following inductive thematic analysis, results for Content of Sport Psychology related to performance readiness (e.g., preparatory routines, mental focus plans); prioritizing sport (e.g., balance/time management, recruiting social support); preserving sport enjoyment (e.g., self-reflection, gratitude/sport as opportunity); and age-related considerations (e.g., managing changing physical realities). Results pertaining to Addressing and Delivering Sport Psychology Services included considerations toward age-related attributes (e.g., values/identity, engaged/invested clients) and accommodating barriers/constraints (e.g., time, stigma). Our results show there are novel considerations when consulting with Masters Athletes, and we discuss what these findings mean for adult-oriented approaches in applied practice.

Cerebellar tDCS Alters the Perception of Optic Flow.

Studies have shown that the cerebellar vermis is involved in the perception of motion. However, it is unclear how the cerebellum influences motion perception. tDCS is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique that can reduce (through cathodal stimulation) or increase neuronal excitability (through anodal stimulation). To explore the nature of the cerebellar involvement on large-field global motion perception (i.e., optic flow-like motion), we applied tDCS on the cerebellar midline while participants performed an optic flow motion discrimination task. Our results show that anodal tDCS improves discrimination threshold for optic flow perception, but only for left-right motion in contrast to up-down motion discrimination. This result was evident within the first 10 min of stimulation and was also found post-stimulation. Cathodal stimulation did not have any significant effects on performance in any direction. The results show that discrimination of optic flow can be improved with tDCS of the cerebellar midline and provide further support for the role of the human midline cerebellum in the perception of optic flow.