Behavioral evidence for motor imagery ability on position sense improvement following motor imagery practice
Résumé
We examined whether participants’imagery ability may contribute to lower limb position sense improvement during a kinesthetic motor imagery practice. Participants were divided into three groups (VI+KI+, VI-KI-, VI+KI-) as a function of their visual (V) and kinesthetic (K) Movement Imagery Questionnaire scores. The sign “+” indicated good imagery ability, while the sign “-” indicated poor imagery ability for each modality. Position sense accuracy was evaluated by means of a knee joint position reproduction task performed without vision before (pre-test) and after (post-tests after 10 min and 48 h) kinesthetic motor imagery practice. The results showed that high kinesthetic motor imagery abilities (VI+KI+) promoted better and more long-term performance improvement than poor kinesthetic motor imagery abilities (VI-KI-, VI+KI-). Discussion focuses on the necessity to take into account the participants’visual and kinesthetic imagery abilities to favor the development of sensory-specific movement representation following motor imagery.