Richard Courtemanche contacted me early last year to ask permission to use two of my tennis sketches – Roger Federer and Milos Raonic – to illustrate a research paper he was writing entitled, ‘Exploring Oscillations in Expert Sensorimotor Anticipation: The Tennis Return of Serve.
I felt elevated and immdediately agreed. Richard, apart from being a fellow tennis fan, is Professor in the Department of Health, Kinesiology and Applied Physiology at the Center for Studies in Behavioural Neurolaology at Concordia University in Montreal. I had actually visited Concordia many years ago on my animation study tour as a Winston Churchill Fellow so had an institutional connection and tentative link to the place.
Richard co-authored the paper with Daniela Popa and Clement Lena from the Department of Heurosciences at the Institut de Biologie de L’Ecole Normale superieure in Paris for a chapter in the now published book, ‘Neuronal Oscillations of Wakefulness and Sleep’ which Richard also edited alongside Thien Thanh Dang-Vu. The study focused on the setup in the return of Milos’ huge serve by Roger’s brain during the Men’s Singles semifinal at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships.
