Elite athletes at the college and professional levels possess exceptional physical and technical skills. Their brains appear to be wired to process visual information, execute split-second decisions, and control and adapt their motor systems with exceptional skill and precision. Our laboratory focuses on what makes these elite athletes' brains and cognitive systems so unique and capable of performing with the speed and precision required to compete at the highest level. We are also interested in quantifying how athletes differ in their cognitive instincts and skills, and how an athlete's cognitive capacities can be combined with his or her physical skills to understand specific performance tendencies, patterns of mental mistakes, and strategies for using these insights to engage more effective decision-making and training. Using powerful methods from the cognitive sciences to quantify athletic instincts, we show that elite athletes possess several dynamic, split-second cognitive skills that outperform their non-athlete age counterparts. Athlete brains are wired for fast, precise cognition. Our current database consists of thousands of elite collegiate and professional athletes spanning football, baseball, softball, soccer, volleyball, basketball, lacrosse, and golf.