We investigated the effect of sports activity on physically-disabled individuals using behavioral and electrophysiological techniques. Visual go/no-go discriminative and simple response tasks were used. Participants included 17 disabled athletes, 9 from open-skill (wheelchair basketball) and eight from closed-skill (swimming) sports, and 18 healthy non-athletes. Reaction times of the disabled athletes were slower than those of healthy non-athletes on both tasks (7% and 13% difference, respectively). Intra-individual variations in reaction times, switch cost, and number of false alarms, were higher in the swimmers, but comparable to healthy non-athletes, in the basketball group. Event-related potentials (ERPs) early components P1, N1, and P2 had longer latencies in the disabled athletes. The late P3 component had longer latency and smaller amplitude in the disabled athletes only in the discriminative response task. The N2 component, which reflected inhibition/execution processing in the discriminative response task, was delayed and reduced in the swimmer group, but was comparable to healthy subjects in the basketball group. Our results show that (1) the ERP components related to perceptual processing, and late components related to executive processing, were impaired in disabled subjects; and (2) open-skill sports such as basketball may partially compensate for executive control impairment by fostering the stability of motor responses and favoring response flexibility.
As participation in
wheelchair sports increases, the need of
quantitative assessment of biomechanical
performance indicators and of sports- and
population-specific training protocols has
become central. The present study focuses on
junior wheelchair basketball and aims at (i)
proposing a method to identify biomechanical
performance indicators of wheelchair propulsion
using an instrumented in-field test and (ii)
developing a training program specific for the
considered population and assessing its efficacy
using the proposed method. Twelve athletes (10
M, 2 F, age = 17.1 ± 2.7 years, years of
practice = 4.5 ± 1.8) equipped with
wheelchair- and wrist-mounted inertial sensors
performed a 20-metre sprint test. Biomechanical
parameters related to propulsion timing,
progression force, and coordination were
estimated from the measured accelerations and
used in a regression model where the time to
complete the test was set as dependent variable.
Force- and coordination-related parameters
accounted for 80% of the dependent variable
variance. Based on these results, a training
program was designed and administered for three
months to six of the athletes (the others acting
as control group). The biomechanical indicators
proved to be effective in providing additional
information about the wheelchair propulsion
technique with respect to the final test outcome
and demonstrated the efficacy of the developed
program.
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