Eyes wide shut: How visual cues affect brain patterns of simulated gait.

ABSTRACT: In the last 20 years, motor imagery (MI) has been extensively used to train motor abilities in sport and in rehabilitation. However, MI procedures are not all alike as much as their potential beneficiaries. Here we assessed whether the addition of visual cues could make MI performance more comparable with explicit motor performance in gait tasks. With fMRI we also explored the neural correlates of these experimental manipulations. We did this in elderly subjects who are known to rely less on kinesthetic information while favoring visual strategies during motor performance. Contrary to expectations, we found that the temporal coupling between execution and imagery times, an index of the quality of MI, was less precise when participants were allowed to visually explore the environment. While

SUBMITTER: Zapparoli L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7502842 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature