We tested the hypothesis that the nervous system, and the cortex in particular, is a critical determinant of muscle strength/weakness and that a high level of corticospinal inhibition is an important neurophysiological factor regulating force generation. A group of healthy individuals underwent 4 wk of wrist-hand immobilization to induce weakness. Another group also underwent 4 wk of immobiliza...

Studies in children and adults with the reading disability developmental dyslexia have shown behavioral improvements after reading intervention. In another line of work, it has been shown that intensive training in a variety of cognitive and sensorimotor skills can result in changes in gray matter volume (GMV). This study examined changes in GMV following intensive reading intervention in child...

Commercially available high-resolution satellite imagery from sensors such as IKONOS and QuickBird are important data sources for a variety of urban area applications including infrastructure feature extraction and land cover mapping. Land cover maps from medium and high-resolution imagery are typically generated through supervised spectral classification of multispectral imagery. Supervised cl...

Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) often use spatial filters to improve signal-to-noise ratio of task-related EEG activities. To obtain robust spatial filters, large amounts of labeled data, which are often expensive and labor-intensive to obtain, need to be collected in a training procedure before online BCI control. Several studies have recently developed zero-t...

[Purpose] The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of motor imagery training for trunk movements on trunk muscle control and proprioception in stroke patients. [Subjects and Methods] A total of 12 study subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental group (a motor imagery training group) and the control group (a neurodevelopmental treatment, NDT) group. The two groups were tr...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Paresis of the upper extremity after stroke is not effectively solved by existing therapies. We investigated whether mental imagery training combined with electromyogram-triggered electric stimulation improved motor function of the paretic upper extremity in patients with chronic stroke and induced cortical changes. METHODS Fourteen subjects with chronic stroke (≥12 mon...

Over the past 2 decades, much work has been carried out on the use of mental practice through motor imagery for optimizing the retraining of motor function in people with physical disabilities. Although much of the clinical work with mental practice has focused on the retraining of upper-extremity tasks, this article reviews the evidence supporting the potential of motor imagery for retraining ...

Neuroimaging studies have suggested that the auditory cortex is involved in music processing as well as in auditory imagery. We hypothesized that music training may be associated with improved auditory imagery ability. In this study, performance of musically trained and musically naive subjects was compared on: (1) a musical mental imagery task (in which subjects had to mentally compare pitches...

Objectives: To determine whether athletes use motivational and cognitive imagery during injury rehabilitation and to develop an instrument for measuring imagery use. Design: A survey concerning imagery use during rehabilitation was administered to injured athletes. Setting: The Fowler Kennedy Sport Medicine Clinic in London, Ontario, Canada. Participants: Injured athletes (N = 71 ) receiving ph...