Controllability of Motor Imagery and Transformation of Visual Imagery
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This study examined the relation between control of motor imagery and generation and transformation of visual imagery by testing 54 subjects. We used two measures of the Controllability of Motor Imagery test to evaluate the ability to control motor imagery. One was a recognition test on which the subject imagines as if one sees another's movement, and the other was a regeneration test on which one imagines as if one moves one's own body. The former test score was related to processing time of a mental rotation task and the latter one was not but would reflect sport experience. It was concluded that two meanings of the test could reflect different aspects such as observational motor imagery and body-centered motor imagery.Keywords:
Motor Imagery
Mental Rotation
Mental Rotation
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A growing number of studies show that visual mental imagery recruits the same brain areas as visual perception. Although the necessity of hV5/MT+ for motion perception has been revealed by means of TMS, its relevance for motion imagery remains unclear. We induced a direction-selective adaptation in hV5/MT+ by means of an MAE while subjects performed a mental rotation task that elicits imagined motion. We concurrently measured behavioral performance and neural activity with fMRI, enabling us to directly assess the effect of a perturbation of hV5/MT+ on other cortical areas involved in the mental rotation task. The activity in hV5/MT+ increased as more mental rotation was required, and the perturbation of hV5/MT+ affected behavioral performance as well as the neural activity in this area. Moreover, several regions in the posterior parietal cortex were also affected by this perturbation. Our results show that hV5/MT+ is required for imagined visual motion and engages in an interaction with parietal cortex during this cognitive process.
Mental Rotation
Parietal lobe
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Mental Rotation
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Mental rotation is the ability to mentally represent the hypothetical view of an object rotated away from its actual viewpoint. It can be experimentally tested by a paradigm in which participants judge whether two stimuli are identical or not. The two stimuli are rotated and the size of angle between the two determines how long participants will take to come to a decision. This suggests that mental rotation is a mental process analogous to real rotation. This finding has been of importance for mental imagery research more broadly because (a) it illustrated that, unlike in behavioristic thinking, it is possible to research mental processes in a scientific way, and (b) because it was the foundation of many experiments supporting the similarities between mental imagery and perception, both in terms of brain activation and in terms of computational models.
Mental Rotation
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Our ability to form visual images within our mind is known as visual mental imagery and enables us to draw on internal representations in the absence of external stimuli. Aphantasia, a recent condition to gain attention within the field of visual neuroscience, describes the experience of individuals who lack voluntary visual mental imagery. The majority of research in this area has stemmed from subjective reports of visual imagery, through questionnaires such as the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ). More recently, a few studies have investigated impairments in cognitive function; however, these studies are limited in terms of the low sample size of aphantasic individuals used within the studies. As yet, no study has explored mental rotation (MR) performance in congenital aphantasics. Using the classic Shepard and Metzler MR paradigm, here we examine MR performance in 20 individuals with congenital aphantasia, as well as measuring self-reported visual object and spatial imagery through questionnaires (VVIQ, Spontaneous Use of Imagery Scale and Object-Spatial Imagery Questionnaire). We find that aphantasic participants self-report higher scores for visual spatial imagery compared to object imagery scores, which were below average of the object imagery scores reported by controls. Furthermore, in the MR test, aphantasic individuals took longer to rotate the stimuli compared to controls, and this time increased in line with the increased level of difficulty of rotation. Despite aphantasics taking longer to mentally rotate stimuli compared to controls, aphantasic participants were more accurate then control participants across all levels of difficulty. Our results indicate that aphantasics use a different strategy when performing the MR task, leading to slower reaction times but higher accuracy. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018
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To investigate the format of mental images and the penetrability of mental imagery performance to top-down influences in the form of gravity information, children (4-, 6-, 8- and 10-year-olds) and adults (N = 112) performed mental rotation tasks. A linear increase in response time with rotation angle emerged at 6-years, suggesting that spatial properties are represented in children’s mental images. Moreover, 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds or adults, took longer to respond to rotated stimuli pairs when gravity information was incongruent with the direction of rotation rather than congruent. Overall, findings suggest that in contrast to adults’, 6- to 10-year-olds’ mental rotation performance was penetrated by top-down information. This research (a) provides insight into the format of young children’s mental images and (b) shows that children’s mental rotation performance is penetrable by top-down influences.
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Spatial Ability
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Abstract Aim To investigate the relationship between mental imagery and specific language impairment ( SLI ) and explore the assumption that children with SLI are less able to generate mental images and/or convert them, when compared to typical development ( TD ) children of the same age. Methods Twenty‐four children, aged six to eight, took part in two tests to see how well they generated and rotated mental images. The participants were 12 SLI children (six boys and six girls) and 12 TD children (six boys and six girls), matched by age and gender. Results The statistical analysis showed a significant difference between the two groups when it came to generating mental imagery. However, there were no significant differences with regard to rotating mental imagery. Conclusion The results suggest imagery deficit in language‐impaired children is not caused by mental rotation, but by other aspects of image processing, such as generation, maintenance and interpretation of visual images.
Mental Rotation
Specific Language Impairment
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Chronometric and imaging studies have shown that motor imagery is used implicitly during mental rotation tasks in which subjects for example judge the laterality of human hand pictures at various orientations. Since explicit motor imagery is known to activate the sensorimotor areas of the cortex, mental rotation is expected to do similar if it involves a form of motor imagery. So far, functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography have been used to study mental rotation and less attention has been paid to electroencephalogram (EEG) which offers a high time-frequency resolution. The time-frequency analysis is an established method for studying explicit motor imagery. Although hand mental rotation is claimed to involve motor imagery, the time-frequency characteristics of mental rotation have never been compared with those of explicit motor imagery. In this study, time-frequency responses of EEG recorded during explicit motor imagery and during a mental rotation task, inducing implicit motor imagery, were compared. Fifteen right-handed healthy volunteers performed motor imagery of hands in one condition and hand laterality judgement tasks in another while EEG of the whole head was recorded. The hand laterality judgement was the mental rotation task used to induce implicit motor imagery. The time-frequency analysis and sLORETA localisation of the EEG showed that the activities in the sensorimotor areas had similar spatial and time-frequency characteristics in explicit motor imagery and implicit motor imagery conditions. Furthermore this sensorimotor activity was different for the left and for the right hand in both explicit and implicit motor imagery. This result supports that motor imagery is used during mental rotation and that it can be detected and studied with EEG technology. This result should encourage the use of mental rotation of body parts in rehabilitation programmes in a similar manner as motor imagery.
Motor Imagery
Mental Rotation
Auditory imagery
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Motor Imagery
Mental Rotation
Predictability
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Although motor imagery has been pointed as a promising strategy for the rehabilitation of children with neurological disorders, information on their development throughout childhood and adolescence is still scarce. For instance, it is still unclear at what age they reach a development comparable to the motor imagery performance observed in adults. Herein we used a mental rotation task to assess motor imagery in 164 typically developing children and adolescents, which were divided into four age groups (6-7 years, 8-9 years, 10-11 years, 12-13 years) and 30 adults. The effects of biomechanical constraints, accuracy and reaction time of the mental rotation task were considered. ANOVA showed that all groups had the effect of biomechanical restrictions of the mental rotation task. We found a group effect for accuracy (F [4,180] = 17,560; p 0.05). Concluding, children aged 6-7 years were able to perform motor imagery, motor imagery ability improved as the participants' ages increased, and children aged 10 and over-performed similarly to adults.
Mental Rotation
Motor Imagery
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Developmental age
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