Neuropsychological Activations and Networks While Performing Visual and Kinesthetic Motor Imagery

Abstract

This study aimed to answer the questions ‘What are the neural networks and mechanisms involved in visual and kinesthetic motor imagery?’, and ‘Is part of cognitive processing included during visual and kinesthetic motor imagery?’ by investigating the neurophysiological networks and activations during visual and kinesthetic motor imagery using motor imagery tasks (golf putting). The experiment was conducted with 19 healthy adults. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to examine neural activations and networks during visual and kinesthetic motor imagery using golf putting tasks. The findings of the analysis on cerebral activation patterns based on the two distinct types of motor imagery indicate that the posterior lobe, occipital lobe, and limbic lobe exhibited activation, and the right hemisphere was activated during the process of visual motor imagery. The activation of the temporal lobe and the parietal lobe were observed during the process of kinesthetic motor imagery. This study revealed that visual motor imagery elicited stronger activation in the right frontal lobe, whereas kinesthetic motor imagery resulted in greater activation in the left frontal lobe. It seems that kinesthetic motor imagery activates the primary somatosensory cortex (BA 2), the secondary somatosensory cortex (BA 5 and 7), and the temporal lobe areas and induces human sensibility. The present investigation evinced that the neural network and the regions of the brain that are activated exhibit variability contingent on the category of motor imagery.

Neural signatures of imaginary motivational states: desire for music, movement and social play

“…However, the asymmetry was more pronounced for music imagery with a greater magnitude of N400 sources in the right hemisphere than the left. Consistently, previous studies have reported a right hemispheric asymmetry for tone imagery (Guo and Chen 2022), visuomotor imagery (Kwon et al 2023), spatial navigation imagery (Boly et al 2007), facial expression imagery (Kim et al 2007), emotional imagery (Tomasino et al 2014) and music imagery (Zatorre and Samson 1991;Zatorre and Halpern 1993;Halpern 2001). On the flip side, a tendency towards left hemispheric asymmetry would be usual for imagining movement (Zou et al 2022), imagining written language (see the review by Liu et al 2022) or tools (Belardinelli et al 2009).…”

Neural signatures of imaginary motivational states: desire for music, movement and social play

“…However, the asymmetry was more pronounced for music imagery with a greater magnitude of N400 sources in the right hemisphere than the left. Consistently, previous studies have reported a right hemispheric asymmetry for tone imagery (Guo & Chen, 2022), visuomotor imagery(Kwon et al, 2023), spatial navigation(Boly et al, 2007), facial expressions(Kim et al, 2007), emotions(Tomasino et al, 2014) and music imagery(Zatorre & Samson, 1991;Zatorre & Halpern, 1993;Halpern, 2001). On the ip side, a tendency towards left hemispheric asymmetry would be usual for imagining movement(Zou et al, 2022), imagining written language (see the review byLiu et al, 2022) or tools(Belardinelli et al, 2009).…”

Neural correlates of recalled sadness, joy, and fear states: a source reconstruction EEG study

“…This was particularly evident over the posterior brain areas, suggesting a key role for these regions in the vividness and visual components of emotional experience recall. Previous studies have consistently reported a right hemispheric asymmetry for visuomotor imagery ( 98 ), spatial navigation ( 99 ), emotions ( 100 ), and music imagery ( 101 – 103 ). The strong activation that was observed over the right temporal lobe across all three emotional conditions, as highlighted by Liu et al.…”