Children with unilateral cerebral palsy show diminished implicit motor imagery with the affected hand

Abstract

ERPEvent-related potentials HLJ Hand laterality judgement RRN Rotation-related negativity AIM Motor imagery refers to the mental simulation of a motor action without producing an overt movement. Implicit motor imagery can be regarded as a first-person kinesthetic perceptual judgement, and addresses the capacity to engage into the manipulation of one's body schema. In this study, we examined whether children with unilateral cerebral palsy (CP) are able to engage in implicit motor imagery.METHOD A modified version of the hand laterality judgment task was employed. Erroneous responses, reaction times, and event-related potentials from the electroencephalograph were analysed.RESULTS In 13 children with typical development (mean age 10y 7mo, SD 1y 2mo; seven male, six female), we observed the classic rotation direction effect. Specifically, when comparing outward rotated with inward rotated hand pictures, decreased accuracy and increased response times were observed. Event-related potentials analyses of the electroencephalogram revealed a more marked N1 and an enhanced rotation-related negativity.INTERPRETATION These findings suggest that an implicit motor imagery strategy was used to solve the task. However, in 10 children with unilateral CP (mean age 10y 7mo, SD 2y 5mo; five male, five female), these effects were observed only when the less-affected hand was involved. This observation suggests that children with CP could benefit from visual training strategies.Cerebral palsy (CP) describes a group of permanent disorders of movement and posture that are attributed to non-progressive disturbances that occurred in the developing fetal or infant brain.

To What Extent Can Motor Imagery Replace Motor Execution While Learning a Fine Motor Skill?

“…However, the role of mere motor preparation for learning a fine motor skill should be specified in future research. These results have relevant consequences for therapies using mental practice, for example, for children with cerebral palsy or patients after stroke ( Jongsma et al, 2015 ; Kim & Lee, 2015 ). Our results showed that motor imagery may especially help to improve the accuracy of the motor skill, whereas physical practice will be needed to improve response speed.…”

Explicit Motor Imagery for Grasping Actions in Children With Spastic Unilateral Cerebral Palsy

“…In the past decade, several studies using implicit MI tasks like the HLJ, reported that MI is severely impaired in UCP children (12, 25, 26, 55, 56). On the other hand, recent works (31, 32) support the idea that explicit imagery processes increase body awareness and facilitate patients to use an effective motor strategy.…”

Advancing interventions for children with motor restrictions

“…Motor performance in both groups can be characterized by slow, effortful, inaccurate, and ill-coordinated movements that are overly dependent on visual feedback (Noten, Wilson, & Steenbergen, 2014;Wilson et al, 2013). In recent years, an overwhelming amount of behavioural and neurophysiological evidence from our research group (Jongsma et al, 2015b;Steenbergen & Gordon, 2006;Steenbergen et al, 2013;Zielinski, Jongsma, Baas, Aarts, & Steenbergen, 2014) and others (Caeyenberghs et al, 2009;Williams et al, 2011;Wilmut & Wann, 2008) has provided important new insights into the motor control system that is affected in these children. Studies using a range of experimental paradigms show that children with CP and DCD, despite their different aetiologies, have similar deficits in motor prediction and online control (Adams et al, 2014;Steenbergen et al, 2013;Wilson et al, 2013).…”

“…Internal modelling is a fundamental concept in motor control and learning (Jeannerod, 2001(Jeannerod, , 2006Wolpert, 1997;Wolpert & Kawato, 1998). Since its first conceptualisation, the existence of internal models has been validated in numerous behavioural studies (Katschmarsky, Cairney, Maruff, Wilson, & Currie, 2001;Pereira, Landgren, Gillberg, & Forssberg, 2001;Williams et al, 2011) and formalized in computational neuroscience (Kawato, 1999). Internal forward (or predictive) models contribute to volitional control by anticipating the sensory consequences of a given movement.…”