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Although physical commitment is required to be successful at a given sport or activity, mental preparation is the key to victory. When individuals are competing at the Olympic level, those competitors have very small physical differences. What separates the winners from the losers is the mental preparation. Practice builds mental strength through memory and confidence; with this strong mentality, competitors are most successful when they let loose and "go with the flow." Letting oneself go in stressful situations or important competitions is crucial because thinking too much can lead to making foolish mistakes from the overwhelming stress a person can put on them self. Once a person starts to focus on one single adjustment, their performance deteriorates. Entering the "flow" state allows a person to perform easily and comfortably without stress. Practice actually betters the brain through the memorization of muscle movements. In order to achieve success, it is essential for one to maintain an alert state of mind. In this, a person is always prepared for what comes next. Keeping calm in important competitions is equally important; practice betters one's ability to do this through hormone and brain chemistry changes. Motivation also affects performance. Only those who have positive mindsets and strong minds are going to win competitions. Sports affect people for the rest of their lives through the mental changes they experience. 

Mental rehearsal and "dry run" movements greatly improve the performance of athletes and performers. An experiment was executed with high jumpers to test the influence of mental rehearsal and "dry run" on overall performance. With mental rehearsal, the performance of high jumpers improved by 35%. Even better, through mental rehearsal and "dry run" actions, the athletes' performances bettered by 45%. Mental imagery and physical practice both better one's performance because the two use overlapping neural networks in the brain. Therefore, they work together to improve performance. 

Music can have extraordinary affects on the human brain. Looking in on "ear worms" (meaning getting a song stuck in your head), research reveals that what's going on is neural circuits getting stuck in a repeating loop, playing the thing repeatedly in the head. It is also found that, in the process of human evolution, the structures that respond to music in the brain were first to evolve than the structures that respond to language. Further research also looked into the brain's response to musical pleasure, and animals' response to beats.

The brain has a balance between "gray matter" and "white matter." People suffering from chronic stress tend to have more white matter, which is white tissue with a  myelin coating. Studies have shown that the stem cells in people with chronic stress mature into oligodendrocytes, which produce myelin. As a result, their learning and memory skills are affected because more oligodendrocytes are being produced instead of neurons. It is also believed that stress causes the hippocampus to become strongly connected to the amygdala, weakening the connection to the prefrontal cortex. This means that people with stress disorders have faster fear responses and have bigger responses to stressful situations than they normally would.