The maintenance of goal-directed behavior relies upon a cascade of covert mental actions including motor imagery and planning. Here we investigated how cues imbued with motivational salience can invigorate motor imagery networks preceding action. We adapted the Pavlovian-to-instrumental (PIT) paradigm to explore this by substituting motor action with motor imagery. Thus, reward was contingent u...

Biological motion perception is often claimed to support social cognition, and to rely upon embodied representations and motor imagery. Are people with higher levels of social traits or more vivid motor imagery better at biological motion perception? We administered four experiments measuring sensitivity in using (global) form and (local) motion cues in biological motion, plus well-established ...

Numerous studies provide evidence that motor skill acquisition is associated with dynamic changes in cortical and subcortical regions. Athletes are a professional population who are engaged in extensive motor training for long periods. However, the neural substrates of extreme level motor performance have not been clarified. We used kinesthetic imagery task to induce the mental representation o...

Compromised action performance is one of the most characteristic features of children with unilateral spastic cerebral palsy (USCP). Current rehabilitation efforts predominantly aim to improve the capacity and performance of the affected arm. Recent evidence, however, suggests that compromised motor planning may also negatively affect performance of activities of daily living. In this paper we ...

Accumulating evidence indicates that motor imagery and motor execution share common neural networks. Accordingly, mental practices in the form of motor imagery have been implemented in rehabilitation regimes of stroke patients with favorable results. Because direct monitoring of motor imagery is difficult, feedback of cortical activities related to motor imagery (neurofeedback) could help to en...

To investigate the effect of negative motor imagery on corticospinal excitability, we performed transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies in seven healthy subjects during imagination of suppressing movements. Subjects were asked to imagine suppression of TMS-induced twitching movement of their nondominant left hands by attempting to increase the amount of relaxation after receiving an aud...

Kumpulainen, Susanne 2009. The effect of PAS and motor imagery on the excitability of the motor cortex. Department of Biology of Physical Activity, University of Jyväskylä. Master’s theses of biomechanics. 41 pages. The plasticity of the brain is an increasingly important topic for physical therapists interested in (re)learning and repair following injury. A number of potential endogenous and e...

In this study, we investigated corticospinal excitability during mental simulation of a leg extension movement with the technique of transcranial magnetic stimulation. Motor evoked potentials were recorded in both knee extensors (quadriceps) and flexors (biceps femoris) in 19 trained participants (healthy volunteers). The amplitude and latency of motor evoked potentials were compared in three c...

Motor imagery and action observation facilitate motor recovery of patients because both the motor imagery and the action observation share the activation of cortical neural networks implicated in movement execution. Specifically, imagery, observation, and execution activate the medial parietal area of the brain located between the parieto‐ occipital sulcus and the posterior end of the cingulate...

If motor imagery uses neural structures involved in action execution, then the neural correlates of imagining an action should differ between individuals who tend to execute the action differently. Here we report fMRI data showing that motor imagery is influenced by the way people habitually perform motor actions with their particular bodies; that is, motor imagery is 'body-specific' (Casasanto...