EEG correlates of cognitive demand in experts chess players

Abstract

The game of chess involves cognitive demands that are experienced as effort. It has been proposed that these cognitive resources consumption have a metabolic dimension on the nervous tissue so that it would be a physiologically measurable phenomenon. In the present work we studied the effect of different attentional and cognitive demands within the game of chess have on behavioral and electroencephalographic measurements. We designed a chess problem, to be solved by chess expert players (N = 18), with differnet levels of difficulty. In our results, an increase in reaction times and accuracy were related to attentional demand increase. An increase in Alpha band power in parieto-occipital regions was observed, indicating a posible greater involvement of these areas in overall task processing.