This study aimed to analyse the effectiveness of NeuroTracker to improve sports performance related measures across 37 elite athletes, including water polo (13), taekwondo (12) and tennis athletes (12), with a total of 20 athletes rigorously completing all assessment protocols.

What Was Studied

26 NeuroTracker sessions were completed with these difficulty progressions: 14 seated, 6 standing up, 6 in an integrated balancing position. Large gains in visual tracking speeds occurred across the groups. Performance assessments involved both coaches and athletes using a visual analogical scaled questionnaire to objectively assess the athletes’ visual concentration, perception speed and peripheral vision as references to on-going levels of performance. These assessments took place frequently throughout the NeuroTracker training program, including pre and post training. Visual assessments were measured pre and post NeuroTracking training and included a range of standardized optometric tests, such as: static and dynamic visual acuity (Palomar disk), visual contrast sensitivity (personal clinic software FSC), saccadic fixations near/far (Les Taules de Hart), response-time to peripheral stimulus (AcuVision 1000, International AcuVision Systems Intl.), stereopsis (Titmus-Wirt test at 40cm), and selective focused attention (d2 test of attention)

What Was Found

The training program led to a statistically significant pre-post improvement in most visual skills: static visual acuity, stereopsis, spatial contrast sensitivity, saccadic ocular movements, selective attention on the d2 test. No improvement was found on reaction time to a peripheral stimulus or dynamic visual acuity.

Takeaways

Transfer to sports performance was found through both coach and athlete subjective assessments with significant improvements across ‘Concentration’, ‘Perception speed’, ‘Peripheral vision’. Athletes tended to rate their performance higher than coaches, but their ratings followed the same progression (significant correlation).

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Reference: Lluïsa Quevedo et al. ‘Perceptual-cognitive Training with the NeuroTracker 3D-MOT to Improve Performance in Three Different Sports’. Apunts, Educación Física y Deportes, 119, 97-108, 2015

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