Neuroplus biofeedback improves attention, resilience, and injury prevention in elite soccer players

Performance and injury prevention in elite soccer players are typically investigated from physical-tactical, biomechanical and metabolic perspectives. However, executive functions, visuospatial abilities, and psychophysiological adaptability or resilience are also fundamental for efficiency and wellbeing in sports. Based on previous research associating autonomic flexibility with prefrontal cortical control, we designed a novel integrated autonomic biofeedback training method called " Neuroplus " to improve resilience, visual attention and injury prevention. Herein, we introduce the method and provide an evaluation of twenty elite soccer players from the Italian Soccer High Division (Serie-A): ten players trained with Neuroplus and ten trained with a control treatment. The assessments included psychophysiological stress profiles, a visual search task and indexes of injury prevention, which were measured pre-and post-treatment. The analysis showed a significant enhancement of physiological adaptability, recovery following stress, visual selective attention and injury prevention that were specific to the Neuroplus group. Enhancing the interplay between autonomic and cognitive functions through biofeedback may become a key principle for obtaining excellence and wellbeing in sports. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that shows improvement in visual selective attention following intense autonomic biofeedback.