New Perspectives on the Role of Vision in Sports

About this Research Topic

Background

Vision is one of the main senses involved in processing the information around us. Thus, it allows the planning and execution of responses to certain stimuli.

In the sports field, vision is the ability of athletes to use the three stages of visual processing (perception, integration, and response), to respond effectively and efficiently to a stimulus. Visual processing involves the visual system, the central nervous system, and the skeletal-muscular system.

Visual skills are essential in most sports, and visual sensory information represents between 85%-90% of the sensory information an athlete receives. However, the importance of vision not only depends on the sport or position in which it is played but also depends on the aspects of vision that are considered. These are the visual tests that are used to evaluate vision. Visual acuity is the best-known visual test, however, there are many other tests, which allow different visual abilities to be evaluated. Dynamic visual acuity, the ability to resolve fine details in dynamic conditions, is essential for referees and players who are in constant movement. Accommodation and vergences allow you to quickly achieve clear and stable vision at different distances. Contrast sensitivity reflects athletes' performance when conditions are not optimal, such as when it is rainy or foggy. Stereopsis is fundamental in the three-dimensional analysis of the environment. Its evaluation allows us to know the time it can take for the athlete to reach a goal, depending on the distance to the goal to be reached and its size.

Sports vision is a new specialty, which allows improving and preserving visual function to increase sports performance. Within this specialty, other skills with an oculomotor component are evaluated, such as eye-hand/eye-foot/eye-body coordination, considered the center of athletic ability; eye tracking, analysis of eye movements at each moment of training; motor reaction time, time required to complete a predetermined simple motor movement; recognition speed, ability to quickly process visual information; peripheral vision, especially important in team sports; and visual memory, the ability of the eyes and brain to recognize patterns on the playing field, and to be able to process that information quickly and efficiently.

This Special Issue aims to select a collection of articles (original research, case studies, reviews, systematic reviews, or analysis) that promote knowledge about the importance of vision in sports training, both in the training stages and on the playing field.

Key topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- sports performance and visual skills
- sports visual exam
- sports visual training
- repercussions of sports practice on the visual system
- new technologies for sports vision training

Keywords: vision, sports, visual processing, visual skills, visual sensory, optometry

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