Prior to the EEG recording, participants practiced the velopharyngeal closure technique [29]. The EEG was recorded during an olfactory oddball paradigm consisting of two blocks of 100 trials each (25 deviant chemosensory stimuli in a train of 75 standard stimuli). The stimuli were presented in pseudo-randomized order (with the first three trials being standards) for 0.5 s with an inter stimulus interval (ISI) of 9 s. In each of the two blocks, the standard stimulus was either the anxiety or the sport stimulus, with the order of these blocks counterbalanced across participants. The participants were instructed to avoid eye movements and to silently count the total number of odor presentations (deviants and standards).
