Brain Functional Connectivity of Knee Extension Exercise Differs During External and Internal Foci of Attention

An abstract of the study by Schmitz et al determining brain functional connectivity differences between knee extension exercises performed with external and internal foci of attention. Results show that during the internal relative to the external condition, the right occipital pole had significantly greater functional connectivity between the left superior parietal lobule 7A (cluster size = 814 voxels, Zmin-max = 2.3-3.7, Zmean = 2.6, P ≤ .001) and right visual cortex V4, V3, and V2 (cluster size = 622 voxels, Zmin-max = 2.3-3.2, Zmean = 2.5, P = .008). There were no greater regions of functional connectivity of the external relative to internal conditions.