Cross-population applications of stroboscopic visual training: implementation strategies, effects, and potential mechanisms

Stroboscopic visual training (SVT) is a neurocognitive intervention that intermittently occludes visual input, thereby promoting adaptive modulation of the central nervous system under heightened perceptual load. In recent years, SVT has been increasingly applied in athletic training, health promotion, and clinical rehabilitation, demonstrating multidimensional intervention potential across diverse populations. This review systematically summarizes the implementation strategies and training effects of SVT in elite athletes, healthy adults, individuals with balance impairments, and older adults, with a focus on its effects on cognitive processing, motor control, and sensory integration. Current evidence suggests that SVT protocols should be individually tailored according to stroboscopic parameters, such as frequency and duty cycle, as well as the overall training period, with intervention effects varying substantially across populations. SVT may enhance visual perception and cognitive processing efficiency in athletes, strengthen cognitive control and postural stability in healthy adults, and promote sensory compensation and motor function remodeling in individuals with neurocognitive disorders or musculoskeletal injuries. Mechanistically, SVT may optimize perception-action integration by improving visual information processing efficiency, reshaping attentional strategies, enhancing predictive processing, and facilitating sensory reweighting. Future studies should further examine dose-response relationships in older adults and rehabilitation populations, and use neuroimaging techniques to clarify the underlying central mechanisms.