Visual Disruption and Neuromechanics During Landing-Cutting in Individuals With Chronic Ankle Instability

Context: Individuals with chronic ankle instability (CAI) demonstrate altered movement patterns when their vision is disturbed during simple tasks, such as single-legged standing and walking. However, it remains unclear whether visual disruption by stroboscopic glasses alters movement patterns during landing-cutting movements, considered highly demanding sport maneuvers that mimic a typical athletic movement.

Objectives: To identify altered lower extremity kinematics and muscle activation when vision is disrupted by stroboscopic glasses during landing-cutting tasks in individuals with CAI.

Design: Case-control study.

Setting: Laboratory.

Patients or other participants: A total of 18 individuals with CAI (age = 22.3 ± 2.3 years, height = 1.75 ± 0.1 m, mass = 72.5 ± 9.8 kg) and 18 matched healthy controls (age = 21.7 ± 2.3 years, height = 1.75 ± 0.1 m, mass = 71.9 ± 10.3 kg).

Intervention(s): All participants performed 5 trials of a landing-cutting task with (SV) and without (NSV) stroboscopic glasses.

Main outcome measure(s): Frontal- and sagittal-plane lower extremity kinematics and 6 lower extremity muscle activations during the stance phase of a landing-cutting task in the SV and NSV conditions.

Results: Individuals with CAI demonstrated more ankle-inversion angle from 18% to 22% and from 60% to 100% of the stance phase and more peroneus longus activation from initial contact to 18% of the stance phase under the SV condition than under the NSV condition. We observed no differences in knee- and hip-joint angles between the visual conditions for both groups.

Conclusions: When wearing stroboscopic glasses, individuals with CAI showed altered movement patterns, including increased ankle-inversion angle and peroneus longus activation during the stance phase of a landing-cutting task. The results suggest that they may lack the ability to reweight sensory information to adapt their movement to visual disruption.