Stroboscopic visual training in sport: a structured narrative review of effects, applications, and potential neurophysiological mechanisms.

Abstract

Stroboscopic Visual Training (SVT) is an emerging intervention that periodically occludes visual input and creates a temporally constrained visual environment during perceptual or sport-specific tasks. This structured narrative review synthesizes current evidence on the effects of SVT on perceptual-cognitive function and sport performance and discusses its potential neurophysiological mechanisms. The available evidence suggests that, under restricted visual-input conditions, SVT may facilitate more efficient use of task-relevant visual information and may support anticipatory decision-making, visual short-term memory, and perception-action coupling. These effects appear more likely to occur in tasks requiring rapid reactions, precise judgments, and the processing of high-speed dynamic information, although the magnitude and transferability of these effects remain task-specific and inconsistent across studies. Preliminary neurophysiological evidence indicates that SVT has been associated with changes in event-related potential components, including N2 latency in motion-sensitive visual areas and P100 latency in the primary visual cortex. However, these findings should be interpreted cautiously because the current mechanistic evidence is limited, often based on small samples, and relies mainly on indirect neurophysiological measures. Although SVT is a controllable training approach that can be embedded within sport-specific practice, its ecological transfer to real competitive performance and its long-term effectiveness remain insufficiently established. Future research should focus on establishing dose-response models for SVT parameters, applying multimodal neurophysiological methods, improving methodological quality through active control conditions and follow-up assessments, and systematically examining task transfer and long-term retention to support more precise and evidence-informed applications of SVT in sport.