The explosive growth of esports and technology-enhanced gaming has created a new scientific area of human performance in which millisecond decision-making, sustained cognitive load, and ultra-precise motor control converge. Unlike traditional sports, competitive gaming and immersive exergaming unfold within highly instrumented digital environments, allowing continuous capture of neural, physiological, and behavioral signals. Early evidence links intensive play to both performance gains and heightened risks, ranging from stress-related fatigue to attentional dysregulation, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Clarifying how psychological well-being, cognitive demands, and sensorimotor skills interact across the spectrum from recreational gamers to elite esports athletes is therefore critical. Such insight will inform evidence-based training, injury prevention, and mental-health interventions, while advancing Movement Science goals and the broader SDG agenda of promoting good health and quality education in rapidly evolving digital contexts.

Despite the rapid rise of esports and technology-mediated play, research on how sustained cognitive load, rapid sensorimotor demands, and psychological well-being interact remains fragmented. Most studies isolate a single domain, stress, attention, or kinematics, leaving unanswered how these factors jointly shape performance trajectories and health outcomes from casual gaming to elite competition. This Research Topic aims to close that gap by integrating recent technological and conceptual advances. Low-latency wearables, eye-tracking webcams, and affordable EEG headsets now permit millisecond-level synchrony between neural, physiological, and movement data, while machine-learning pipelines can merge these data into actionable biomarkers of fatigue, flow, and injury risk. We invite contributions that use such tools to: (1) map dose-response curves linking play intensity to mental health and motor adaptation; (2) separate developmental and gender-specific pathways; and (3) test interventions, such as neuro-feedback, VR-based perceptual training, ergonomic redesign, that optimize both well-being and performance. By uniting psychologists, neuroscientists, engineers, clinicians and sport and exercise scientists, we seek a comprehensive, evidence-based framework for sustainable digital athleticism.

This Research Topic welcomes empirical and theoretical contributions that elucidate the mechanisms linking psychological well-being, cognitive load, and motor control in esports, exergaming, VR, and recreational gaming. We seek studies that use advanced measurement tools and interdisciplinary frameworks to advance Movement Science’s understanding of technology-mediated performance and health.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to the following:
• Multimodal profiling of stress, fatigue, and recovery during intensive play
• Neuro-feedback and biofeedback interventions for performance and mental health
• VR- or AR-based perceptual and motor training paradigms
• Developmental and gender-specific trajectories in gaming skill acquisition
• Ergonomics and injury-prevention strategies for prolonged gameplay
• Machine-learning approaches to predict performance or burnout
• Ethical and educational frameworks promoting sustainable digital athleticism

Are you interested in contributing a manuscript to this Research Topic?

Psychological Well-Being, Cognitive Demands, and Motor Control in Esports Athletes and Recreational Gamers