The somatosensory system detects sensory stimuli such as touch, pain, pressure and movements, for example, those related to joint movement. This system receives input from peripheral musculotendinous joint receptors, thereby detecting changes in muscle length and tension, position and movement. Afferent nerves, also known as mechanoreceptors, are found in the skin, musculotendinous unit, and in bone, ligaments, and joint capsules.
The loss of proprioception resulting from sprains can be attributed to damage to these mechanoreceptors.
Injuries to joint receptors in ligaments and joint capsules produce deficits in the perception of joint position, and therefore, it appears that irreversible damage may lead to a greater propensity towards chronic relapses.
In addition to damage to joint receptors, trauma can cause proprioceptive loss from damage to muscle receptors, such as muscle spindles.
A subjective functional instability of the ankle and a facilitation of the sprain can derive from a proprioceptive deficit of the foot and ankle, which could in turn lead to a deficit of the sense of position in the ankle and of balance.
The profession of the organist and pianist is closely related to the good functional stability of the ankle since their activity is based on the fact that they use their feet without visual control but with acoustic feedback.
Ankle injuries, as a consequence of the functional chains to which it is related, can also lead to chronic low back pain and, in the most serious cases, interrupt their career.
For this reason they require good training to obtain good sensory control of the position of the foot.
Through their profession they train some of these parameters with daily exercise and specifically:
Organists: need to maneuver the many pedals of their instrument often very quickly using their feet in all directions of foot movement
Pianists: they use only three pedals, to move which they have a stable position of the foot and perform exclusively flexion-extension of the ankle joint
For the aforementioned reasons, as can also be seen from the literature, pianists are more predisposed to inversion/eversion distortions, training mainly two parameters.