This article discusses recent evidence supporting the use of action observation therapy and motor imagery practice for rehabilitation of Parkinson's disease. A main question that emerges from the review regards the different effectiveness of these approaches and the possibility of integrating them into a single method to enhance motor behaviour in subjects with Parkinson's disease. In particula...

Both motor imagery and mirror training have been used in motor rehabilitation settings to promote skill learning and plasticity. As motor imagery and mirror training are suggested to be closely linked, it was hypothesized that mirror training augmented by motor imagery would increase corticospinal excitability (CSE) significantly compared to mirror training alone. Forty-four participants were s...

Motor imagery andactualmovement engage similar neural structures, however, whether they produce similar training-related corticospinal adaptations has yet to be established. The aim of this study was to compare changes in strength and corticospinal excitability following shortterm motor imagery strength training and short-term strength training. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was appli...

BACKGROUND Learning motor skills involves subsequent modulation of resting-state functional connectivity in the sensory-motor system. This idea was mostly derived from the investigations on motor execution learning which mainly recruits the processing of sensory-motor information. Behavioral evidences demonstrated that motor skills in our daily lives could be learned through imagery procedures....

It has been hypothesized that the underlying mechanism of clumsy motor behaviour in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is caused by a deficit in the internal modelling for motor control. An internal modelling deficit can be shown on a behavioural level by a task that requires motor imagery. Motor imagery skills are suggested to be related to anticipatory action planning, bu...

OBJECTIVE We examined how corticospinal excitability was affected by motor imagery of foot dorsiflexion and motor imagery of gait. METHODS Transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over the primary motor cortex of 16 young healthy subjects while they performed imaginary foot dorsiflexions (Experiment I) and imaginary walking (Experiment II). Motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded fr...

BACKGROUND It is unclear whether mental simulation without actual muscle contraction associated with actual motion can increase the excitability of the spinal neural function. OBJECTIVE To determine the best method for mental simulation without actual muscle contraction, we analyzed the F-wave of thenar muscles after stimulating the median nerve by motor imagery whilst holding the sensor of a...

The present study aimed at checking the effectiveness of motor imagery on children's motor training. A total of 64 students aged 9 to 10 years, enrolled in three different 4 grade classes, participated in the study. Subjects in the modeling group were asked to view the video recording of an expert performing the task; those in the physical practice group were trained through the actual executio...