The current study was designed to assess the influence of volleyball at professional level on Evoked Potentials (EPs), and Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) in both auditory and visual modalities. EPs and ERPs parameters were recorded from two age-matched groups: ten professional volleyball players and ten sedentary subjects. The electroencephalogram was recorded from electrodes sites placed according the ten-twenty international system. VEPs were obtained using a reversal pattern according to the standard protocol and recorded from occipital sites (Oz, O1, O2). BAEPs were obtained using the standard protocol using monaural stimulation and were recorded from the two mastoids (A1 and A2).The P300 component was elicited in both visual and auditory modalities with the classical oddball paradigm and was recorded at midline sites from frontal (Fz), central (Cz) and parietal (Pz) electrodes. A two-factor repeated-measures analysis of variance (subject category × electrode) was applied to EP and ERP parameters (latencies and amplitudes). The Greenhouse-Geisser correction was used to minimize type I error in repeated ANOVAs. p values less than .05 were considered significant. No significant differences were found concerning VEPs and BEAPs parameters, amplitudes nor latencies between volleyball players and sedentary subjects. In contrast, volleyball players differed from sedentary subjects by shorter visual P300 latencies, and also by larger P300 amplitudes in both modalities. Present data suggest that professional volleyball players are enable to process faster visual information at cognitive level without particularity of sensory pathways. They may allocate a greater amount of attentional resources than sedentary subjects in both modalities. Our findings are in line with previous studies showing that physical training may influence ERPs (Lardon and Polich, 1997). Moreover, they argued for the hypothesis proposed by Magnié, Bermon, Martin, Madany-Lounis, Suisse, Muhammad and Dolisi (2000) since volleyball might require visual information processing at cognitive level and attention allocation in both modalities without need sensorial particularities.
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