PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1702858
This article is part of the Research TopicBrain Function Alterations in Populations with Musculoskeletal Disorders: Now let’s talk about itView all 3 articles
Targeting Visual-Sensory and Cognitive Impairments Following Lateral Ankle Sprains: A Practical Framework for Functional Assessment Across the Return-to-Sport Continuum Part 2: From theory to practice: recommendations for optimizing Return To Sport after lateral ankle sprains using cognitive and visual-sensory assessments
Provisionally accepted
Brice Picot1*
Alexandre Maricot2
François Fourchet3
Alli Gokeler4
Bruno Tassignon5
Ronny LOPES6
Alexandre Hardy7- 1Université Savoie Mont Blanc, Chambéry, France
- 2Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Brussels Health Campus, Brussels, Belgium
- 3Hopital de la Tour, Meyrin, Switzerland
- 4Universitat Paderborn Department Sport & Gesundheit, Paderborn, Germany
- 5Universiteit Hasselt Biomedisch Onderzoeksinstituut Rehabilitation Research Center, Diepenbeek, Belgium
- 6Centre Orthopedique Santy, Lyon, France
- 7Clinique du sport, Paris, France
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Lateral ankle sprain (LAS) is the most common traumatic injury in sports, characterized by a high recurrence rate, with chronic ankle instability (CAI) developing in ~40% of cases. Both altered sensory reweighting and cognitive impairments have been identified as potential contributors to the elevated risk of (re)injury. The first part of this work aimed to clarify cognitive constructs relevant to post-injury rehabilitation, alongside the concept of sensory reweighting that may be observed in patients following LAS. It also introduced the Ankle-GOTM, the first validated score providing clinicians with an objective criterion to support return-to-sport (RTS) decision-making. However, this promising tool does not account for visual and cognitive constraints encountered during functional tasks. Therefore, the second part of this work aims to translate emerging theories and growing evidence into practical applications, illustrating concrete examples of RTS assessments in patients with LAS and CAI. This perspective's article proposes a "β(rain)" extension of the Ankle-GOTM integrating dual-tasks paradigms and visual constraints to better approximate sport-specific conditions. Each functional test (Single leg stance, modified Star Excursion Balance Test, Side Hop Test and Figure-of-8 test) is paired with either a dual-tasks targeting key cognitive domains or a visual constraint. An adapted scoring method is outlined, together with a guide for interpreting results during the late rehabilitation phase, tailored to patients' specific deficits.
Keywords: Lateral ankle sprain, Chronic instability, Cognition, Sensory reweighting, Return to sport, Ankle-GO score
Received: 10 Sep 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Picot, Maricot, Fourchet, Gokeler, Tassignon, LOPES and Hardy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Brice Picot, brice.picot@univ-smb.fr
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