Abstract
Previous psychological studies using questionnaires have consistently reported that athletes have superior motor imagery ability, both for sports-specific and for sports-non-specific movements. However, regarding motor imagery of sports-non-specific movements, no physiological studies have demonstrated differences in neural activity between athletes and non-athletes. The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in sensorimotor rhythms during kinesthetic motor imagery (KMI) of sports-non-specific movements between gymnasts and non-gymnasts. We selected gymnasts as an example population because they are likely to have particularly superior motor imagery ability due to frequent usage of motor imagery, including KMI as part of daily practice. Healthy young participants (16 gymnasts and 16 non-gymnasts) performed repeated motor execution and KMI of sports-non-specific movements (wrist dorsiflexion and shoulder abduction of the dominant hand). Scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded over the contralateral sensorimotor cortex. During motor execution and KMI, sensorimotor EEG power is known to decrease in the α- (8–15 Hz) and β-bands (16–35 Hz), referred to as event-related desynchronization (ERD). We calculated the maximal peak of ERD both in the α- (αERDmax) and β-bands (βERDmax) as a measure of changes in corticospinal excitability. αERDmax was significantly greater in gymnasts, who subjectively evaluated their KMI as being more vivid in the psychological questionnaire. On the other hand, βERDmax was greater in gymnasts only for shoulder abduction KMI. These findings suggest gymnasts' signature of flexibly modulating sensorimotor rhythms with no movements, which may be the basis of their superior ability of KMI for sports-non-specific movements.
Highlights
There are two types of motor imagery, namely, kinesthetic motor imagery (KMI) and visual motor imagery (VMI)
The results revealed that when required to repeatedly switch between relaxing and motor execution or KMI of sports-non-specific movements, the event-related desynchronization (ERD) magnitude during KMI was significantly greater in gymnasts, who subjectively evaluated their imagery including KMI as more vivid, while no difference between groups was observed during motor execution
It should be noted that the present results revealed greater ERD magnitude during KMI of sports-non-specific movements in gymnasts than in nongymnasts, differences in neural activity between athletes and non-athletes have not been reported in motor imagery of sports-non-specific movements in previous studies using EEG (Di Nota et al, 2017), MEG (Kraeutner et al, 2018), TMS (Fourkas et al, 2008), or fMRI (Wei and Luo, 2010)
Summary
There are two types of motor imagery, namely, kinesthetic motor imagery (KMI) and visual motor imagery (VMI). Previous studies have shown that performing KMI in training improves performance in various tasks, including sequence learning (Sobierajewicz et al, 2017; Lebon et al, 2018), jump height (Battaglia et al, 2014), and free-throw shooting (Peynircioglu et al, 2000) To explain these performance gains, several neuroscience studies have provided evidence that KMI activates some neural substrates in common with actual movement, including the primary motor cortex, supplementary motor area, and inferior parietal lobe (Decety, 1999; Hanakawa, 2002; Guillot et al, 2009; Zabicki et al, 2017), as well as inducing neural plasticity in these areas (Pascual-Leone et al, 1995; Ietswaart et al, 2011; Ruffino et al, 2017). The findings of these studies suggest that the neural activity underlying motor imagery ability may differ between athletes and non-athletes, for sports-specific imagery and for motor imagery of sports-non-specific movements
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