psychophysiological responses during motor imagery

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Brain activity during motor imagery was measured, using Functional magnetic resonance imaging. One world-class swimmer participated in the study. Five imagery tasks were included ; swimming image without task cue, swimming image with task cue, race rehearsal, running image without task cue, running image with task cue. The tasks were chosen to compare between 1) imagery of skilled performance and unskilled performance, 2) imagery with specific task cue and without task cue, and 3) mental practice imagery and mental rehearsal imagery. Block paradigm (Rest-Image) was utilized In four tasks except for race rehearsal, supplementary motor area (SMA) was activated, being consistent with previous findings that SMA is largely involved in motor imagery. During imagery without task cue, both in swimming and running, premotor cortex and primary motor cortex were activated. Only in swimming image without task cue, slight activation of right cerebellum was observed. These findings generally support the previous studies that motor imagery shares the common nueralnetwork with actual motor performance. The present study, however, did not show any difference among varied tasks, due to insufficient data point.