Long-Lasting Cortical Reorganization as the Result of Motor Imagery of Throwing a Ball in a Virtual Tennis Court

Abstract

In order to characterize the neural signature of a motor imagery (MI) task, the present study investigates for the first time the oscillation characteristics including both of the time-frequency measurements, event related spectral perturbation and intertrial coherence (ITC) underlying the variations in the temporal measurements (event related potentials, ERP) directly related to a MI task. We hypothesize that significant variations in both of the time-frequency measurements underlie the specific changes in the ERP directly related to MI. For the MI task, we chose a simple everyday task (throwing a tennis ball), that does not require any particular motor expertise, set within the controlled virtual reality scenario of a tennis court. When compared to the rest condition a consistent, long-lasting negative fronto-central ERP wave was accompanied by significant changes in both time frequency measurements suggesting long-lasting cortical activity reorganization. The ERP wave was characterized by two peaks at about 300 ms (N300) and 1000 ms (N1000). The N300 component was centrally localized on the scalp and was accompanied by significant phase consistency in the delta brain rhythms in the contralateral central scalp areas. The N1000 component spread wider centrally and was accompanied by a significant power decrease (or event related desynchronization) in low beta brain rhythms localized in fronto-precentral and parieto-occipital scalp areas and also by a significant power increase (or event related synchronization) in theta brain rhythms spreading fronto-centrally. During the transition from N300 to N1000, a contralateral alpha (mu) as well as post-central and parieto-theta rhythms occurred. The visual representation of movement formed in the minds of participants might underlie a top-down process from the fronto-central areas which is reflected by the amplitude changes observed in the fronto-central ERPs and by the significant phase synchrony in contralateral fronto-central delta and contralateral central mu to parietal theta presented here.

Online and Offline Performance Gains Following Motor Imagery Practice: A Comprehensive Review of Behavioral and Neuroimaging Studies

“…The imagery literature provided ample evidence of such reorganizations across various disciplines (Olsson et al, 2008a ; Sacco et al, 2009 ; Wei and Luo, 2010 ; Chang et al, 2011 ; Baeck et al, 2012 ; Bezzola et al, 2012 ; Olshansky et al, 2015 ; Wolf et al, 2015 ), hence attesting that brain activations during MI reflected life-long brain changes resulting from successive online and offline neural reorganizations elicited by intense amounts of practice. Brain activity during MI reflects the motor automatization taking place along the course of development (Cebolla et al, 2015 ), but also mirrors expertise-dependent changes in the brain networks of athletes (for a review see Debarnot et al, 2014 ). Nonetheless, past studies on expertise-dependent changes of MI networks rarely compared two extreme levels on the expertise continuum, namely an Olympic level champion vs. a novice athlete.…”

Influence of Judo Experience on Neuroelectric Activity During a Selective Attention Task

“…In addition, ERD could be interpreted differently according to the frequency band analyzed. For instance, mu rhythms are maximized during movement execution (Cebolla et al, 2015;Cheron et al, 2016) while reduction in amplitude of ERD in alpha band are linked to "arrest reaction, " that is, less ERD amplitude in more experienced athletes (Del Percio et al, 2011). Studies with ERSP have shown preliminary evidence that, for instance, expert golfers presented ERD for alpha and beta rhythms on the bilateral primary sensorimotor cortex before successful and unsuccessful putts (Babiloni et al, 2008).…”

Brain Oscillations in Sport: Toward EEG Biomarkers of Performance

“…Mu rhythm is maximally expressed over the sensorimotor areas during a relaxed state (Pfurtscheller and Neuper, 1994 ; Pfurtscheller et al, 1997 ) and reduced just before, during movement execution, tactile stimulation and motor imagery a condition interpreted as ERD (Figure 6B ) in contrast to an amplitude enhancement referred to ERS (Figure 6C ). Interestingly, the association of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and motor imagery, two conditions known to increase the cortical excitability of the motor cortex (Nitsche and Paulus, 2001 ; Facchini et al, 2002 , respectively), increase the ERD amplitude during motor imagery (Cebolla et al, 2015 ) in particular at the level of dominant hand (Kasuga et al, 2015 ). As motor imagery is more and more used in motor skill training (Schuster et al, 2011 ), the conjunction of tDCS, which is able to induces motor imagery (Speth et al, 2015 ), VR stimulation and motor imagery controlled by mu oscillation recording should be the future avenue for increasing CNS performance.…”