Mystery surrounds the cause of large individual differences in mental imagery vividness and strength, and how these might map onto mental disorders. Here, we report the concentration of sex hormones predicts the strength and vividness of visual mental imagery. We employed an objective measure of imagery utilizing binocular rivalry and a subjective questionnaire to assess imagery. The strength a...

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...

Single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to test the assumption that kinesthetic imagery of action is more 'motor' than visual imagery of action. We assessed corticospinal excitability during motor imagery of a thumb-palm opposition movement by recording potentials evoked by TMS from two hand muscles that would (opponens pollicis, OP, target) or would not (abductor digiti m...

There are contrasting reports upon the level of effectiveness of motor imagery in learning new motor skills, but there is general consensus that motor imagery can lead to improvements in performance, especially in combination with physical practice. In the present study we examined the effectiveness of motor imagery in the acquisition of movement invariants in two grapho-motor trajectorial lear...

Mental imagery is a complex cognitive process that resembles the experience of perceiving an object when this object is not physically present to the senses. It has been shown that, depending on the sensory nature of the object, mental imagery also involves correspondent sensory neural mechanisms. However, it remains unclear which areas of the brain subserve supramodal imagery processes that ar...

The aims of the present review were to (i) provide a critical overview of the current literature on the effects of mental imagery on muscular strength in healthy participants and patients with immobilization of the upper extremity (i.e., hand) and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), (ii) identify potential moderators and mediators of the “mental imagery-strength performance” relationship and (iii...

iranian art is one of the richest artistic heritages in the world comprising different fields such as architecture, paintings, weaving, pottery, calligraphy, metalworking, petrography, etc. this art had inseparable link with nature; especially with plants and animals in different eras; and it has been interwoven with poetry and literature so that its glory, beauty and expression have increased ...

[Purpose] The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in spinal motor neuron excitability and autonomic nervous system activity during motor imagery of isometric thenar muscle activity at 10% and 50% maximal voluntary contraction (MVC). [Methods] The F-waves and low frequency/high frequency (LF/HF) ratio were recorded at rest, during motor imagery, and post-trial. For motor imagery tri...

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) and visual imagery are believed to involve overlapping neuronal representations in the early visual cortex. While a number of studies have provided evidence for this overlap, at the behavioral level VSTM and imagery are dissociable processes; this begs the question of how their neuronal mechanisms differ. Here we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to ex...

The vocal imitation of pitch by singing requires one to plan laryngeal movements on the basis of anticipated target pitch events. This process may rely on auditory imagery, which has been shown to activate motor planning areas. As such, we hypothesized that poor-pitch singing, although not typically associated with deficient pitch perception, may be associated with deficient auditory imagery. P...