Academic literature on the topic 'Motor imagery abilities'

This study extended motor imagery theories by establishing specificity and verification of expected brain activation patterns during imagery. Eighteen female participants screened with the Movement Imagery Questionnaire-3 (MIQ-3) as having good imagery abilities were scanned to determine the neural networks active during an arm rotation task. Four experimental conditions (i.e., KINESTHETIC, INTERNAL Perspective, EXTERNAL Perspective, and REST) were randomly presented (counterbalanced for condition) during three brain scans. Behaviorally, moderate interscale correlations were found between the MIQ-3 and Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire-2, indicating relatedness between the questionnaires. Partially confirming our hypotheses, common and distinct brain activity provides initial biological validation for imagery abilities delineated in the MIQ-3: kinesthetic imagery activated motor-related areas, internal visual imagery activated inferior parietal lobule, and external visual imagery activated temporal, but no occipital areas. Lastly, inconsistent neuroanatomical intraindividual differences per condition were found. These findings relative to recent biological evidence of imagery abilities are highlighted.

Aim: The purpose of the present study is to examine the motor imagery profiles of children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy. Material and Method: 52 Hemiplegic (29 males, 23 females) individuals with 11.35 ± 3.48 years of mean age were included in the research. Participants’ implicit motor imagery abilities were analyzed with the laterality task. In addition, weekday and weekend screen times were questioned. Results: No statistically significant difference was determined in motor imagery abilities in terms of gender and affected extremity (p>0.05). Additionally, a significant correlation was found between screen time and Laterality task affected side accuracy and Laterality task not affected side accuracy percentages in both females and males (p<0.05). A significant correlation was found between age and motor imagery skills of males and left hemiplegic individuals. Conclusion: Excessive screen times negatively affect motor imagery abilities in Hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy. It was observed that motor imagery skills were associated with age, but not with gender and affected sides.

Aim: To determine the effectiveness of motor imagery training to improve the lower extremity function and gait in subjects with sub-acute stroke. Methods: Forty four patients with subacute stroke with gait impairment were randomly assigned to one of two groups: motor imagery training group or muscle relaxation group. At the beginning and after six weeks of therapy, the ability to use motor imagery and lower limb performance were assessed. Results: There were substantial differences of scores between both groups, with the motor imagery group progressing more than the muscle relaxation group. Conclusion: Motor imagery may have a beneficial and effective task-specific effect on gait function in sub-acute stroke patients. Keywords: motor imagery; gait rehabilitation; sub-acute stroke patients

Aim: To determine the effectiveness of motor imagery training to improve the lower extremity function and gait in subjects with sub-acute stroke. Methods: Forty four patients with subacute stroke with gait impairment were randomly assigned to one of two groups: motor imagery training group or muscle relaxation group. At the beginning and after six weeks of therapy, the ability to use motor imagery and lower limb performance were assessed. Results: There were substantial differences of scores between both groups, with the motor imagery group progressing more than the muscle relaxation group. Conclusion: Motor imagery may have a beneficial and effective task-specific effect on gait function in sub-acute stroke patients. Keywords: motor imagery; gait rehabilitation; sub-acute stroke patients

Not much is known about how well stroke patients are able to perform motor imagery (MI) and which MI abilities are preserved after stroke. We therefore applied three different MI tasks (one mental chronometry task, one mental rotation task, and one EEG-based neurofeedback task) to a sample of postacute stroke patients (n=20) and age-matched healthy controls (n=20) for addressing the following questions: First, which of the MI tasks indicate impairment in stroke patients and are impairments restricted to the paretic side? Second, is there a relationship between MI impairment and sensory loss or paresis severity? And third, do the results of the different MI tasks converge? Significant differences between the stroke and control groups were found in all three MI tasks. However, only the mental chronometry task and EEG analysis revealed paresis side-specific effects. Moreover, sensitivity loss contributed to a performance drop in the mental rotation task. The findings indicate that although MI abilities may be impaired after stroke, most patients retain their ability for MI EEG-based neurofeedback. Interestingly, performance in the different MI measures did not strongly correlate, neither in stroke patients nor in healthy controls. We conclude that one MI measure is not sufficient to fully assess an individual’s MI abilities.

People with Parkinson’s disease (PD) experience kinesthetic deficits, which affect motor and nonmotor functions, including mental imagery. Imagery training is a recommended, yet underresearched, approach in PD rehabilitation. Dynamic Neuro-Cognitive Imagery (DNI™) is a codified method for imagery training. Twenty subjects with idiopathic PD (Hoehn and Yahr stages I–III) were randomly allocated into DNI training (experimental;n=10) or in-home learning and exercise program (control;n=10). Both groups completed at least 16 hours of training within two weeks. DNI training focused on anatomical embodiment and kinesthetic awareness. Imagery abilities, disease severity, and motor and nonmotor functions were assessed pre- and postintervention. The DNI participants improved (p<.05) in mental imagery abilities, disease severity, and motor and spatial cognitive functions. Participants also reported improvements in balance, walking, mood, and coordination, and they were more physically active. Both groups strongly agreed they enjoyed their program and were more mentally active. DNI training is a promising rehabilitation method for improving imagery ability, disease severity, and motor and nonmotor functions in people with PD. This training might serve as a complementary PD therapeutic approach. Future studies should explore the effect of DNI on motor learning and control strategies.

Functional equivalence hypothesis and motor-cognitive model both posit that motor imagery performance involves inhibition of overt physical movement and thus engages control processes. As motor inhibition in internal motor imagery has been fairly well studied in adults, the present study aimed to investigate the correlation between internal motor imagery and motor inhibition in children. A total of 73 children (7-year-olds: 23, 9-year-olds: 27, and 11-year-olds: 23) participated the study. Motor inhibition was assessed with a stop-signal task, and motor imagery abilities were measured with a hand laterality judgment task and an alphanumeric rotation task, respectively. Overall, for all age groups, response time in both motor imagery tasks increased with rotation angles. Moreover, all children’s response times in both tasks decreased with age, their accuracy increased with age, and their motor inhibition efficiency increased with age. We found a significant difference between 7-year-olds and 9-year-olds in the hand laterality judgment task, suggesting that the involvement of motor inhibition in internal motor imagery might change with age. Our results reveal the underlying processes of internal motor imagery development, and furthermore, provide practical implications for movement rehabilitation of children.

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) is a fast growing area of research to enable communication between our brains and computers. EEG based motor imagery BCI involves the user imagining movement, the subsequent recording and signal processing on the electroencephalogram signals from the brain, and the translation of those signals into specific commands. Ultimately, motor imagery BCI has the potential to be applied to helping those with special abilities recover motor control. This paper presents an evaluation of performance for EEG based motor imagery BCI with a classification accuracy of 80.2%, making use of features extracted using the Fast Fourier Transform and the Discrete Wavelet Transform, and classification is done using an Artificial Neural Network. It goes on to conclude how the performance is affected by the particular feature sets and neural network parameters.

Prism adaptation (PA) is a useful method to investigate short-term sensorimotor plasticity. Following active exposure to prisms, individuals show consistent after-effects, probing that they have adapted to the perturbation. Whether after-effects are transferable to another task or remain specific to the task performed under exposure, represents a crucial interest to understand the adaptive processes at work. Motor imagery (MI, i.e., the mental representation of an action without any concomitant execution) offers an original opportunity to investigate the role of cognitive aspects of motor command preparation disregarding actual sensory and motor information related to its execution. The aim of the study was to test whether prism adaptation through MI led to transferable after-effects. Forty-four healthy volunteers were exposed to a rightward prismatic deviation while performing actual (Active group) versus imagined (MI group) pointing movements, or while being inactive (inactive group). Upon prisms removal, in the MI group, only participants with the highest MI abilities (MI+ group) showed consistent after-effects on pointing and, crucially, a significant transfer to throwing. This was not observed in participants with lower MI abilities and in the inactive group. However, a direct comparison of pointing after-effects and transfer to throwing between MI+ and the control inactive group did not show any significant difference. Although this interpretation requires caution, these findings suggest that exposure to intersensory conflict might be responsible for sensory realignment during prism adaptation which could be transferred to another task. This study paves the way for further investigations into MI’s potential to develop robust sensorimotor adaptation.

Motor imagery (MI) is defined as the ability to mentally rehearse a movement within working memory using a first-person perspective and without performing the action. The functional equivalence hypothesis sustains that MI has similar behavioural and neurophysiological characteristics compared to motor execution. These features have encouraged researchers and practitioners to deepen both the basic operations that underlie this mental process and the outcomes of its possible application in motor learning and rehabilitation. In this thesis we investigated the relation between the ability to generate and maintain/manipulate a motor image in mind (measured by the Movement Imagery Questionnaire-3 (MIQ-3) and the mental chronometry score, respectively), memory processes and plasticity phenomena. With this general goal, we conducted three studies on healthy young adults. In study 1 we had two aims: to (1) explore the link between the cognitive processes that occur during kinesthetic imagery and working memory; (2) and to understand how kinesthetic imagery skills influence the pattern of EEG changes during deliberate MI, within those frequency bands associated to working memory processes (Theta, Alpha and Gamma). Thus, in 19 participants we preliminary evaluated kinesthetic imagery (MIQ-3 and the mental chronometry score) and working memory abilities (neuropsychological tests). Then, we measured the EEG correlates of the kinesthetic imagery using the same items of the MIQ-3 as stimuli. We found that high MIQ-3 scores of kinesthetic imagery were associated with a widespread increase in Alpha power that could underlie participants’ ability of maintaining a mental representation in mind thus blocking the retrieval of irrelevant information, as well as long range correlated firing related to maintenance of the relevant one. This block could reflect not only a simple exclusion but also an active inhibition of the areas not involved in the task. On the other hand, the mental chronometry score, that is the discrepancy between the actual and the imagined movement timings (a low score is interpreted as a higher ability) was negatively correlated with the central executive system performance measured by means of the Dual N-Back task. This finding was strengthened by the fact that the changes in Theta power in temporal regions, which are related to the performance of the central executive system, are correlated with the chronometry scores. Participants with a good skill decreased Theta power in these areas, where this rhythm has been implicated in the temporal sequencing of the information retrieved from memory. Moreover, the mental chronometry score was positively related to the Gamma power of the medial regions of the brain that are linked to the ability of maintaining/manipulating the information in mind. In study 2 our aims were: (1) to describe whether an acute immobilization of the dominant upper limb (~30 minutes) produces negative behavioural outcomes; (2) to study whether a mental MI practice performed 15 minutes right before the cast removal could prevent the behavioural negative outcomes that follows the acute immobilization; (3) to investigate whether the effects of the mental MI practice are correlated to the ability to generate a motor image. Thus, 48 participants were preliminarily evaluated both by means of the MIQ-3 and a choice reaction time task where they had to answer as fast and accurate as possible with the left/right hand to left/right affordances. Then, they were assigned to one of three groups: Control, Cast and Cast-MI. In the Cast and Cast-MI the right arm was immobilized. A cast adaptation period of 15 minutes was followed by a training session that the three groups performed in a different manner. The Cast performed the training responding only with the left hand to left affordances; the Cast-MI besides actually answering with the left hand to left affordances, imagined to answer with the right hand to right affordances; the Control performed the training with both hands as the pre-evaluation. After the training, the cast was removed and participants were evaluated again with the same reaction time task performed at the baseline. The results highlighted that a brief immobilization induced a negative effect on the right immobilized arm. Contrarily to our expectations, the mental MI training not only did not prevent these negative outcomes but was also detrimental for the performance of the left (not immobilized) hand, likely due to divided attention between the two hands, with a stronger focus on the immobilized right hand that could have disadvantaged the left one. Moreover, the higher the participants’ ability in generating a visual internal motor image in mind the lower the improvement of the left-hand after the MI training, possibly attributable to a better inhibition of the right motor areas non-involved in the imagery task. Finally, in study 3 we had three aims: (1) to study whether AO could induce a perceptual priming effect in the motor related areas, leading to the appearance of the spontaneous MI; (2) to study whether the occurrence of spontaneous MI during AO modifies the recall of an observed movement sequence as well as the cortical excitability of the primary motor cortex in the region that controls the observed action; (3) to study the correlation between the spontaneous and deliberate MI ability scores. We recruited 21 participants that had to lean a sequence of ball pinches that an actor performed in a video that was shown six times. During AO we collected participants’ eye position and the motor evoked potentials in the muscles both involved (APB and FDI) and not involved (ADM) in the different phases of the observed movement stimulating their primary motor cortex by means of the TMS. After the AO trials, we asked participants to recall the observed motor sequence, to report whether they engaged in MI during AO and to give a rate of this experience using the Likert-type scale of the MIQ-3. Subsequently, participants had to deliberately imagine the movement previously observed giving again a rate by means of the same Likert-type scale used for the spontaneous MI. This protocol was repeated in two conditions: with and without the application of an attentional constraint during the AO trials that directed participants’ attention on the target of the movement (the ball). We found that AO exerted a sort of perceptual priming on the motor regions inducing spontaneous MI in both conditions. When we did not place the attentional constraint, participants not only reported higher score of spontaneous MI quality compared to the other condition but they also had small motor evoked potentials. In contrast, the attentional constraint enhanced the corticospinal excitability of spontaneous motor imagers. It is likely that the visual guide organized in time and space the mental activity during AO and attenuated the quality of spontaneous MI that, in this condition, did not appear to be related to the homologous score of deliberate MI.The evidences that emerged from these studies have relevant implications both in research and applied field, like motor learning and rehabilitation. The neurocognitive characteristics (EEG and Dual N-Back scores) that underlie the MI process highlighted in study 1, could be useful both in the assessment and in the mental training of MI skills. The brief immobilization paradigm that we tested in study 2, could be a fast and easy research method to study the behavioural outcomes of cortical plasticity phenomena linked to limb immobilization. In the same study, we discouraged the concurrent use of a mental and a physical practice that involves the different hands. Also, we underlined the scarce effects of the former in counteracting the negative behavioural outcomes of a brief immobilization. Finally, in study 3 we suggested a simple method that professionals could use to control the possible detrimental effects of spontaneous MI during AO, that is the application of an attentional constraint that guides participants AO experience.

As dance training evolves and becomes more complex, knowledge of motor behavior is foundational in helping dancers learn and master new skills and become more efficient in integrating the skills. Motor Learning and Control for Dance is the first resource to address motor learning theory from a dance perspective. Educators and students preparing to teach will learn practical ways to connect the science behind dance to pedagogy in order to prepare dancers for performance. Dancers interested in performance from the recreational to professional levels will learn ways to enhance their technical and artistic progress. In language accessible even to those with no science background, Motor Learning and Control for Dance showcases principles and practices for students, artists, and teachers. The text offers a perspective on movement education not found in traditional dance training while adding to a palette of tools and strategies for improving dance instruction and performance. Aspiring dancers and instructors will explore how to develop motor skills, how to control movement on all levels, and—most important—how motor skills are best taught and learned. The authors, noted experts on motor learning and motor control in the dance world, explore these features that appeal to students and instructors alike: • Dance-specific photos, examples, and figures illustrate how to solve common problems various dance genres. • The 16 chapters prepare dance educators to teach dancers of all ages and abilities and support the development of dance artists and students in training and performance. • An extensive bibliography of sports and dance science literature allows teachers and performers to do their own research. • A list of key terms is at the beginning of each chapter with an accompanying glossary at the back of the book. Part I presents an overview of motor behavior, covering motor development from birth to early adulthood. It provides the essential information for teaching posture control and balance, the locomotor skills underlying a range of complex dance skills, and the ballistic skills that are difficult to teach and learn, such as grand battement and movements in street dance. Part II explores motor control and how movement is planned, initiated, and executed. Readers will learn how the nervous system organizes the coordination of movement, the effects of anxiety and states of arousal on dance performance, how to integrate the senses into movement, and how speed and accuracy interact. Part III investigates methods of motor learning for dancers of all ages. Readers will explore how to implement a variety of instructional strategies, determine the best approaches for learning dance skills, and motivate and inspire dancers. This section also discusses how various methods of practice can help or hinder dancers, strategies for improving the recall of dance skills and sequences, and how to embrace somatic practice and its contribution to understanding imagery and motor learning. Motor Learning and Control for Dance addresses many related topics that are important to the discipline, such as imagery and improvisation. This book will help performers and teachers blend science with pedagogy to meet the challenge of artistry and technique in preparing for dance performaance.

‘The human brain’ considers the brain as a vast network of connections from which come our extraordinary abilities: perception, learning, memory, reasoning, language, and somehow or another—consciousness. Different areas deal with vision, hearing, speech, body image, motor control, and forward planning. They are all linked, but this is not done through one central processor, but by millions of criss-crossing connections. By contrast, human consciousness seems to be unified. A successful science of consciousness must therefore explain the contents of consciousness, the continuity of consciousness, and the self who is conscious. Research linking consciousness to brain function is discussed along with conditions such as synaesthesia, blindsight, stroke damage, and amnesia.

Coordination abilities are a set of human properties manifested in the training process and in competitive activity, which determines the success in the management of motor actions of different coordination levels (Lyach, 2002). According to Anochin (1979), an anticipation is a particular form of “overtaking reflection”, in which the image of the result of the action of its actual appearance (occurrence) is formed in the mind of man. Based on this statement, we will try to improve the performance of athletes. Improving the results by choosing the right action according to the feedback received after the first attempt and focusing attention and actions on rational and pragmatic implementation, which we expect to improve results and reduce repetitions in the study of new actions. In our view, a way to achieve this goal would be through work to improve the anticipation capabilities of athletes. The problem of anticipation in sports games is of utmost importance for achieving victory in the completion between offender and defender. Coordination of movements is related to coordination with objects, people, animals, and machines, the behavior and movement of which are often unpredictable (Videv, 2015). In turn, anticipation produces skill-actions (respectively, counteractions) that are confidently carried out within a fraction of a second, called “improvisation”, which is significantly increased by targeted multi-year preparation from childhood (7-8 years). Based on everything so far mentioned, we decided to test the coordination abilities of athletes and, at the same time, see how they would act in subsequent situations similar to the previous one to improve their performance by applying their anticipation skills. Our results point to our assertion that creating an image of your work and bringing anticipation actions into the implementation of performance, in this case, the implementation of various coordination exercises, would improve the performance of athletes.

ABSTRACT Rhythmic gymnastics, like other sports disciplines called “artistic”, is continuously developing in a sports-technical sense. Gymnastics varieties, such as “dance gymnastics”, “rhythmical gymnastics”, “expressive gymnastics”, and “plastic and stage expression gymnastics” have lost their individuality but different elements of their means of expression find their place in the requirements for composition. The efforts of the specialists in this sport are aimed at preserving the identity of this sports discipline, namely, using various musical accompaniments and a wide range of dance movements combined with complex exercises. The aim of the research was to trace the development of the difficulty in routines and a retrospect of the main indicators for making competitive routines for the period 1963-2021 was made with the use of a theoretical and synthesis method. The evaluation of dance elements and complex exercises in competitive programs of gymnasts was in the very first Code of Rules known. There are three different components – difficulty of the exercises, general impression, and accuracy of execution. The general changes in the difficulty of the exercises can be clearly seen if we divide the Codes of Rules into the following periods: 1) 1963-1971, 2) 1976-1984, 3) 1997-2005, and 4) 2009-2021. The changes are due to two major factors: - objective – perfection of the training process, emergence of new exercises, gymnasts’ exclusive motor abilities; choreographs, musicians, dancer’ participation in gymnasts’ preparation; - subjective – creation and modification of the rules by members of rhythmic gymnastics technical committee who are representatives of different schools and cultures, with different concepts about the development of the future image of this sport. The retrospect of the requirements in the competitive rules shows that the greatest transformation of rhythmic gymnastics is in its turning into a complex sport.