Resources
Authors & Affiliations
Fabrizio Di Giovanni, Giuditta Gambino, Lorenzo Pia, Giuseppe Ferraro, Filippo Brighina, Danila Di Majo, Tommaso Ciorli, Pierangelo Sardo, Giuseppe Giglia
Abstract
Pseudoneglect phenomenon is a visuospatial attentional bias present in the healthy population, leading subjects to slightly overestimate the left hemifield of space. Interestingly, previous data indicate that athletes involved in open-skill sports exhibit a reduced pseudoneglect compared to the general population. This study aims to explore whether a one-week training period with an open-skill sport exergame can similarly diminish pseudoneglect in healthy subjects. Fifteen non-athletes participants underwent a visuospatial attention task and a control memory task in baseline conditions (t0: Pre-game) and after a brief period (one week, one hour per day, t1: Post-game) of tennis exergaming (ExerGame group: EG). Moreover, two additional experimental groups were assessed under the same conditions: one using a non-exergame platform (Non-Exergame group: NEG) and another one without receiving any video game training (Sedentary group: SE). In the Post-game condition, participants from the EG group demonstrated a marked decrease in leftward space overestimation and made significantly fewer leftward errors compared to the Pre-game condition, without any improvement in the control memory task. The other two groups did not show any differences in the visuospatial attention task and in the control memory task. Our results suggest that a daily training with a tennis exergame has the potential to enhance visuospatial attention isotropy by reducing leftward space overestimation, whereas outcomes from non-exergaming and sedentary inactivity do not change participants' performance. The present research paves the way to the possible use of novel technological tools in the modulation of cognitive performance, tailoring neurophysiological tasks for specific domains.