A new paradigm to assess motor imagery maintenance

Details

Supervisors

Moreno Verdu, Marcos ; Hardwick, Robert M.

Faculty

Faculté des sciences de la motricité

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de la motricité, orientation éducation physique, à finalité spécialisée: management des organisations sportives

Abstract

enMotor imagery (MI) is defined as the mental execution of an action without any overt movement or muscle activation. To date, a direct and objective measure of imagery maintenance during MI is still lacking. The present thesis seeks to address the limitations of existing behavioural paradigms through the development of a new task (the iFST-R) requiring participants to mentally perform an action at a controlled pace. A certain consistency was observed between the FST-R and the iFST-R, as performance deteriorated progressively with sequence progression. More specifically, error increased as the number of elements increased, and temporal performance was particularly altered in the slow condition of the FST-R. In addition, performance in the iFST-R remained above chance for almost the entire sequence, supporting the relevance of the proposed paradigm. However, the present study did not demonstrate a significant influence of sequence complexity or rhythm on imagery performance.