Neural Kinesthetic Contribution to Motor Imagery of Body Parts: Tongue, Hands, and Feet

Abstract

Motor imagery (MI) is assimilated to a perception-action process, which is mentally represented. Although several models suggest that MI, and its equivalent motor execution, engage very similar brain areas, the mechanisms underlying MI and their associated components are still under investigation today. Using 22 Ag/AgCl EEG electrodes, 19 healthy participants (nine males and 10 females) with an average age of 25.8 years old (sd = 3.5 years) were required to imagine moving several parts of their body (i.e., first-person perspective) one by one: left and right hand, tongue, and feet. Network connectivity analysis based on graph theory, together with a correlational analysis, were performed on the data. The findings suggest evidence for motor and somesthetic neural synchronization and underline the role of the parietofrontal network for the tongue imagery task only. At both unilateral and bilateral cortical levels, only the tongue imagery task appears to be associated with motor and somatosensory representations, that is, kinesthetic representations, which might contribute to verbal actions. As such, the present findings suggest the idea that imagined tongue movements, involving segmentary kinesthetic actions, could be the prerequisite of language.

Synchronised neural signature of creative mental imagery in reality and augmented reality

“…The familiar and abstract objects were image entities in a real environment but virtual (disembodied) in augmented reality. Note also that in the augmented reality atmosphere, objects, by construction, are virtual and incorporated into a real environment [ 3 , 15 , 16 ]. This suggest that the bilateral gamma posterior network would be more involved in imagery and execution tasks involving virtual objects, that is, better synchronised for tasks associated with virtual objects.…”

“…real and virtual environments [ 12 ]. Creative ideation naturally relies on mental and cognitive simulation [ 13 ], which requires the intervention of internal imagery [ 14 ] and allows the representations of visual, motor and/or verbal actions to arise [ 15 , 16 ]. Such an approach is assisted by abundant scientific literature that describes and validates the neurocognitive overlapping between the mental simulation of an action and the action itself [ 17 ].…”

Mental imagery of whole-body motion along the sagittal-anteroposterior axis

“…The training phase aimed to familiarise each participant with the experimental paradigm. The experimental paradigm was a repetition of visual cue-based synchronous trials of different motor imagery tasks 4 , 47 – 49 . In accordance with this paradigm (Fig.…”

“…Building on from the “simulation hypothesis”, accumulating evidence suggests that motor imagery (MI), which encompasses a cognitive representation of an actual movement has similar neural correlates to those of real movement 2 . MI of distinct body parts simultaneously actuates and engages the equivalent sensorimotor and somatosensory cortices, including kinaesthetic information 3 , 4 . Empirical evidence for the existence of neural networks has focused particularly on signals associated with frontal (supplementary motor area, motor cortex, dorsolateral premotor cortex, inferior frontal gyrus), and parietal areas (primary somatosensory gyrus, superior and inferior parietal regions including vestibular cortex) 5 , 6 .…”

Enhanced lower-limb motor imagery by kinesthetic illusion

“…kinesthetic illusion will complement the relevant loop. Neuroimaging studies have revealed that a relationship exists between the movement that has been imagined and the activation patterns of somatotopically organized motor and kinesthetic areas ( Giannopulu and Mizutani, 2021 ). In the upper-limb MI-BCI study, KI induced by rubber hand can significantly amplify EEG features and provide better guidance to enhance upper-limb MI ( Song and Kim, 2019 ).…”