Abstract
Motor imagery (MI) is a mental representation of an action without its physical execution. Recently, the simultaneous movement of the body has been added to the mental simulation. This refers to dynamic motor imagery (dMI). This study was aimed at analyzing the temporal features for static and dMI in different locomotor conditions (natural walking, NW, light running, LR, lateral walking, LW, backward walking, BW), and whether these performances were more related to all the given conditions or present only in walking. We have been also evaluated the steps performed in the dMI in comparison with the ones performed by real locomotion. 20 healthy participants (29.3 ± 5.1 years old) were asked to move towards a visualized target located at 10 mt. In dMI, no significant temporal differences respect the actual locomotion were found for all the given tasks (NW: p = 0.058, LR: p = 0.636, BW: p = 0.096; LW: p = 0,487). Significant temporal differences between static imagery and actual movements were found for LR (p < 0.001) and LW (p < 0.001), due to an underestimation of time needed to achieve the target in imagined locomotion. Significant differences in terms of number of steps among tasks were found for LW (p < 0.001) and BW (p = 0.036), whereas neither in NW (p = 0.124) nor LR (p = 0.391) between dMI and real locomotion. Our results confirmed that motor imagery is a task-dependent process, with walking being temporally closer than other locomotor conditions. Moreover, the time records of dMI are nearer to the ones of actual locomotion respect than the ones of static motor imagery.
Highlights
Motor imagery (MI) is defined as a mental rehearsal of an action without its actual performance (Decety, 1996)
This study was aimed at analyzing the temporal features for static and dynamic motor imagery (dMI) in different locomotor conditions, and whether these performances were more related to all the given conditions or present only in walking
Post-hoc analyses revealed that: (i) time was not different between dMI and real performance (RP) for any of the locomotor condition; (ii) time was different between sMI and RP for light running and lateral walking; and (iii) time was different between sMI and dMI for light running, normal and lateral walking
Summary
Motor imagery (MI) is defined as a mental rehearsal of an action without its actual performance (Decety, 1996). The environment and the context in which the MI is performed may improve the mental rehearsal by facilitating the formation of more vivid and precise mental images (Guillot and Collet, 2005; Callow et al, 2006) It has been hypothesized the existence of an egocentric internal model representing the features of own body and its interaction with the external environment, identified as self-centered mental imagery (Land, 2014). This is a cerebral region deputed to form our conscious percept of a stable world, providing information required by the motor system
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