An empirical study on the behavior of motor imagery based on mental rotation

Abstract

Mental rotation cognitive tasks based on motor imagery (MI) have excellent predictability for individual's motor imagery ability. In order to explore the relationship between motor imagery and behavioral data, in this study, we asked 10 right-handed male subjects to participate in the experiments of mental rotation tasks based on corresponding body parts pictures, and we therefore obtained the behavioral effects according to their reaction time (RT) and accuracy (ACC). Later on, we performed Pearson correlation analysis between the behavioral data and the scores of the Movement Imagery Questionnaire-Revised(MIQ-R). For each subject, the results showed significant angular and body location effect in the process of mental rotation. For all subjects, the results showed that there were correlations between the behavioral data and the scores of MIQ-R. Subjects who needed the longer reaction time represented lower motor imagery abilities in the same test, and vice versa. This research laid the foundation for the further study on brain electrophysiology in the process of mental rotation based on MI.