Brain-derived Signals Related to Ball Kicking Movement in Soccer and Technologies Employed: A Systematic Literature Review With Gap Map

Background 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. Methods The PRISMA guidelines were followed in the previously established protocol for this review. Six electronic databases were used for searches (IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, APA PsycNet, EBSCOHost, and PubMed). The search string was formulated based on the following 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 STROBE checklist was used to evaluate the methodological quality of the included studies. Results 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 accompanied by phase-specific cortical dynamics (e.g. within frontal, sensorimotor/central, and parieto-occipital regions). Conclusions Better outcomes tended to be linked with brain patterns related to efficient attentional allocation and visuospatial processing, whereas anxiety and injury appear to shift cortical engagement toward potentially compensatory, less efficient control strategies. Finally, one problem identified in this review was that only 25% literature studies used an opponent attempting to block the shots. Future studies need to improve the design of experimental tasks so that they more closely resemble what occurs in a real game. Trial registration The review protocol was registered in OSF Preregistration under ID #NZASB.