Motor imagery | EPFL Graph Search

Motor imagery is a mental process by which an individual rehearses or simulates a given action. It is widely used in sport training as mental practice of action, neurological rehabilitation, and has also been employed as a research paradigm in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology to investigate the content and the structure of covert processes (i.e., unconscious) that precede the execution of action. In some medical, musical, and athletic contexts, when paired with physical rehearsal, mental rehearsal can be as effective as pure physical rehearsal (practice) of an action. Motor imagery can be defined as a dynamic state during which an individual mentally simulates a physical action. This type of phenomenal experience implies that the subject feels themselves performing the action. It corresponds to the so-called internal imagery (or first person perspective) of sport psychologists. Mental practice refers to use of visuo-motor imagery with the purpose of improving motor behavior. Visuo-motor imagery requires the use of one's imagination to simulate an action, without physical movement. It has come to the fore due to the relevance of imagery in enhancing sports and surgical performance. Mental practice, when combined with physical practice, can be beneficial to beginners learning a sport, but even more helpful to professionals looking to enhance their skills. Physical practice generates the physical feedback necessary to improve, while mental practice creates a cognitive process physical practice cannot easily replicate. When surgeons and other medical practitioners mentally rehearse procedures along with their physical practice, it produces the same results as physical rehearsal, but costs much less. But unlike its use in sports, to improve a skill, mental practice is used in medicine as a form of stress reduction before operations. Mental practice is a technique used in music as well. Professional musicians may use mental practice when they are away from their instrument or unable to physically practice due to an injury.

Motor imagery training to improve language processing: What are the arguments?

Sylvain Jean-François Harquel

Studies showed that motor expertise was found to induce improvement in language processing. Grounded and situated approaches attributed this effect to an underlying automatic simulation of the motor experience elicited by action words, similar to motor ima ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2023

Inter-Task Transfer of Prism Adaptation through Motor Imagery

Lisa Aïcha Mireille Julie Fleury

Prism adaptation (PA) is a useful method to investigate short-term sensorimotor plasticity. Following active exposure to prisms, individuals show consistent after-effects, probing that they have adapted to the perturbation. Whether after-effects are transf ...

MDPI2023

Breathing is coupled with voluntary initiation of mental imagery

Olaf Blanke, Oliver Alan Kannape, Hyeongdong Park

Previous research has suggested that bodily signals from internal organs are associated with diverse cortical and subcortical processes involved in sensory-motor functions, beyond homeostatic reflexes. For instance, a recent study demonstrated that the pre ...

ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE2022