Brain-derived signals related to ball kicking movement in soccer and technologies employed: a systematic literature review with gap map

Recent technological advances have enabled the development of portable data acquisition systems that facilitate the collection of brain signals during sports tasks. The main objective of the present systematic review was to collate evidence regarding studies that have analysed brain-derived indices related to ball kicking action. The PRISMA guidelines were followed in the protocol for this review. Six electronic databases were searched (IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, APA PsycNet, EBSCOHost, and PubMed). The search string followed a PICOS/PECOS framework: participants as human able-bodied subjects regardless of age, evaluated while performing a ball kick task, and reported results of brain-derived metrics. The RoBANS tool was used to evaluate the risk-of-bias of the included studies. The database searches resulted in a total of 1748 records, of which 8 original research articles met all the inclusion criteria. Most studies used EEG systems while few employed fNIRS. Qualitative synthesis indicated that skilled ball kicking performance was generally accompanied by phase-specific cortical dynamics (e.g., within frontal, sensorimotor/central, and parieto-occipital regions) whereas anxiety and injury appear to shift cortical engagement toward potentially compensatory, less efficient control strategies. Data on measurement error was limited while blinding aspects were frequently omitted across studies. Finally, one problem identified in this review was that only one-fourth studies used an opponent attempting to block the shots. Preliminary evidence suggest that kicking outcomes tended to be linked with specific brain patterns. Future studies need to improve the design of experimental tasks so that they more closely resemble what occurs in a real game. The review protocol was registered in OSF Preregistration under ID #NZASB.