Brainwave technology is USMNT’s secret World Cup penalty shootout weapon

Has science gone too far?

A study by researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, however, can perhaps give clues to how the tech works. The researchers used what appears to be a similar technique to “explore the brain activity related to missing penalty kicks,” as they wrote in their 2021 paper. They equipped participants with headgear and “used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate the influence of the brain on this process.”

In the study, they found that “the task-relevant brain region, the motor cortex” — which controls muscle movements — “was more activated when players were not experiencing performance anxiety.” But when they were anxious or distracted, the prefrontal cortex — which helps humans plan ahead or think into the future — was more active. The researchers hypothesized that this activity “can be caused by players’ worries about the consequences of scoring or missing the penalty kicks.” And it was associated with more misses.