A cognitive stimulation system for assessing, profiling, training, and improving performance of athletes and other populations is provided. A sensory semantic language is established with an athlete for relating semantic meaning of a number of sensory signals to corresponding possible actions, the sensory semantic language being essentially new to the athlete. The athlete is instructed to perform an athletic exercise involving skills and full body movement. During the exercise sensory signals are provided to the athlete to require rapid discernment by the athlete of the semantic meaning of the sensory signal to correctly choose one possible action. Whether the athlete correctly responds to the selected sensory signal during said exercise is determined. The system simulates sports scenarios during real sports actions by stimulating different perceptive-cognitive and motor mechanisms typically experienced by athletes during real competition. The cognitive stimulation provided elicits both low and high level cognitive processing.