A neurocognitive approach to prevent non-contact anterior cruciate ligament injury in football: A scoping review

Background - Non-contact anterior cruciate ligament injuries (NC-ACLI) are becoming more common in football due to the involvement of actions such as cutting, landing, pivoting, changing directions, and jumping that expose the knee to angular stresses, rotational motions, and anterior translation force. These risk factors are addressed in the current injury prevention programs(IPP) but have shown to be less effective in further lowering NC-ACLI risk. The missing piece in these IPPs is their inability to target neurocognitive risk factors when a relationship between cognitive competencies and the mechanism of NC-ACLI is evidenced. This gap serves as the basis for the review.
Purpose – To map the literature that has investigated the application of neurocognitive training (NCT) for the prevention of NC-ACLI in footballers.
Study Design – Scoping Review
Methods – A broad eligibility criteria was applied through population, concept, and context framework. Restrictions were applied to languag..., A literature search was conducted in approximately 24 physiotherapy databases, 10 sports sciences and rehabilitation databases and 5 neuroscience databases including SPORTDiscus, COCHRANE, PEDro, SCOPUS, PubMed, and MEDLINE. Keywords like ‘anterior cruci* ligament *’, ‘neurocogni*’ training’ or ‘cogniti* intervention’, ‘football’ or ‘soccer’, and ‘injury prevent*’  were utilised. In an attempt to retrieve most literature on the topic, each neurocognitive components listed in DSM-V criteria were used as search words. Additionally, the types of neurocognitive approaches applied to other sports were used as search terms replacing ‘neurocognitive’ like Visuomotor Reaction Time, Self-Talk, Attention changing, Stress Management, Mindfulness, and Imagery, not to miss any literature. Grey literature was searched for on Google Scholar and Nottingham University (NU Search) using the same search terms. This search was conducted to look for all the relevant evidence published or unpublished from th..., , # A Neurocognitive Approach to Prevent Non-Contact Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury in Football - A Scoping Review.

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kwh70rzcc](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kwh70rzcc)

**List of Abbreviations**

| JBI | Joanna Briggs Institute |
| :--------- | :----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| OSF | Open Science Framework |
| FIFA | Fédération Internationale de Football Association |
| ACL | Anterior Cruciate Ligament |
| ACLI | ACL injury |
| IPP | Injury Prevention Programs ...