Motor and Visual Imagery as Two Complementary but Neurally Dissociable Mental Processes

Recent studies indicate that covert mental activities, such as simulating a motor action and imagining the shape of an object, involve shared neural representations with actual motor performance and with visual perception, respectively. Here we investigate the performance, by normal individual and s...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cognitive neuroscience 2001-10, Vol.13 (7), p.910-919
Main Authors: Sirigu, A., Duhamel, J. R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astrocytoma - psychology
Brain Injuries - psychology
Brain Neoplasms - psychology
Cognition & reasoning
Female
Fingers - innervation
Fingers - physiology
Hand - innervation
Hand - physiology
Humans
Imagination - physiology
Male
Middle Aged
Motor ability
Movement - physiology
Neurology
Posture - physiology
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Reaction Time - physiology
Vision, Ocular - physiology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Recent studies indicate that covert mental activities, such as simulating a motor action and imagining the shape of an object, involve shared neural representations with actual motor performance and with visual perception, respectively. Here we investigate the performance, by normal individual and subjects with a selective impairment in either motor or visual imagery, of an imagery task involving a mental rotation. The task involved imagining a hand in a particular orientation in space and making a subsequent laterality judgement. A simple change in the phrasing of the imagery instructions (first-person or third-person imagery) and in actual hand posture (holding the hands on the lap or in the back) had a strong impact on response time (RT) in normal subjects, and on response accuracy in brain-damaged subjects. The pattern of results indicates that the activation of covert motor and visual processes during mental imagery depends on both top-down and bottom-up factors, and highlights the distinct but complementary contribution of covert motor and visual processes during mental rotation.
ISSN:0898-929X
1530-8898
DOI:10.1162/089892901753165827