Mental rotation of hands and objects in ageing and Parkinson’s disease: differentiating motor imagery and visuospatial ability

Abstract

Motor imagery supports motor learning and performance and has the potential to be a useful strategy for neurorehabilitation. However, motor imagery ability may be impacted by ageing and neurodegeneration, which could limit its therapeutic effectiveness. Motor imagery can be assessed implicitly using a hand laterality task (HLT), whereby laterality judgements are slower for stimuli corresponding to physically more difficult postures, as indicated by a “biomechanical constraint” effect. Performance is also found to differ between back and palm views of the hand, which may differentially recruit visual and sensorimotor processes. Older adults and individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have shown altered performance on the HLT; however, the effects of both ageing and PD on laterality judgements for the different hand views (back and palm) have not been directly examined. The present study compared healthy younger, healthy older, and PD groups on the HLT, an object-based mental rotation task, and an explicit motor imagery measure. The older and PD groups were slower than the younger group on the HLT, particularly when judging laterality from the back view, and exhibited increased biomechanical constraint effects for the palm. While response times were generally similar between older and PD groups, the PD group showed reduced accuracy for the back view. Letter rotation was slower and less accurate only in the PD group, while explicit motor imagery ratings did not differ significantly between groups. These results suggest that motor imagery may be slowed but relatively preserved in both typical ageing and neurodegeneration, while a PD-specific impairment in visuospatial processing may influence task performance. The findings have implications for the use of motor imagery in rehabilitation protocols.

Relationship between Corticospinal Excitability While Gazing at the Mirror and Motor Imagery Ability

“…Previous studies on motor imagery ability have examined the relationship between Parkinson’s disease [ 32 , 33 ] and multiple sclerosis [ 34 ] and motor imagery ability. Additionally, various reports have shown that the neural networks activated during motor imagery differ depending on the motor imagery ability [ 21 , 22 ], that the excitability of corticospinal tracts during motor imagery correlates with motor imagery ability [ 23 , 24 ], and that motor imagery ability is related to the effectiveness of motor imagery training [ 25 ].…”

Mechanisms underlying corruption of working memory in Parkinson's disease

“…Indeed, in the context of mentally rotating hand positions, PD patients have been found to show asymmetries in their proficiency with clockwise or counterclockwise rotations (Helmich et al, 2007). Scant attention has been paid to whether such biases exist in tests of WM in PD patients (though see (Bek et al, 2022). Here, we were able to monitor, quantify and account for the variety of ways in which these errors could impinge on our performance metrics and ascertain whether there were group differences.…”

“…Indeed, in the context of mentally rotating hand positions, PD patients have been found to show asymmetries in their proficiency with clockwise or counter-clockwise rotations (Helmich et al, 2007). Scant attention has been paid to whether such biases exist in tests of working memory in PD patients (though see (Bek et al, 2022).Here, we were able to monitor, quantify and account for the variety of ways in which these errors could impinge on our performance metrics and ascertain whether there were group differences. Although ostensibly the analogue Corsi-like task contains the most opportunities for impaired motor control to affect performance, there was no evidence for systematic biases in patients responded in the horizontal or vertical plane.…”

Motor imagery vividness and symptom severity in Parkinson's disease

“…However, these alterations in MI appear to parallel alterations in motor capabilities and so may be reflective of motor impairment in PD rather than an inability to perform MI (Dominey et al, 1995). Moreover, other studies have found similar performance in PD and control groups when judging hand laterality (Bek et al, 2022;Scarpina et al, 2019;van Nuenen et al, 2012).…”