Motor imagery ability assessments in four disciplines: protocol for a systematic review

Investigation of the effect of a virtual reality-based imagery training model on muscle activation in athletes

Introduction

In the field of sports psychology, imagery training plays a significant role in enhancing athletes' mental preparation and optimizing sports performance. This study aims to investigate the effects of the Virtual Reality-Based Imagery (VRBI) training model on muscle activation and kinesthetic motor imagery skills in athletes. Specifically, the study compares the VRBI model with traditional imagery methods, including Visual Motor Behavior Practice (VMBP) and Video Modeling (VM), to determine its effectiveness in improving neuromuscular responses.

Methods

A quasi-experimental design with repeated measures was employed, involving 30 bodybuilders and fitness athletes who were randomly assigned to VRBI, VMBP+VM, and control groups. Muscle activation was measured using surface electromyography (sEMG) across a 12-week intervention period. The intervention protocols included progressive relaxation, video modeling, and imagery exercises tailored to enhance kinesthetic motor imagery skills.

Results

The results revealed that the VRBI model significantly increased muscle activation levels and kinesthetic motor imagery skills compared to both the VMBP+VM and control groups (p < 0.01). Notably, athletes in the VRBI group achieved peak muscle activation one week earlier than those in the VMBP+VM group, demonstrating a faster adaptation process. Additionally, VRBI training led to a more substantial improvement in imagery skills, suggesting its superiority in mental training interventions.

Discussion and conclusion

The VRBI model offers a more effective approach to enhancing muscle activation and kinesthetic motor imagery skills in athletes. These findings highlight the potential of VRBI as a valuable tool for optimizing sports performance and accelerating peak performance achievement.

Defining and measuring motor imagery in children: mini review

Motor imagery (MI) is the ability to engage in the mental representation of a task consciously or automatically without generating a voluntary movement. While the construct of MI and its various dimensions have been comprehensively studied in adults, research remains limited in children. Children as young as 5 years old can engage in MI, and this engagement is crucial to their motor development and skill acquisition. Further, the degree of skill achievement is directly linked to MI responsiveness. Clinicians and researchers often measure MI responsiveness in children to facilitate skill development and retention. However, few measures exist that can appropriately assess MI responsiveness in children. To date, a focused review examining the MI dimensions in children as well as comparing the characteristics of MI measures in children is lacking, and thus a research gap exists. This paper examines past and current research describing MI ability in children from the theoretical, developmental, and neurological lens and systematically analyzes the properties of three widely used operations - the movement imagery questionnaire in children (MIQ-C), the Florida praxis imaginary questionnaire (FPIQ-C), and the mental chronometry paradigm (MCP) - to measure MI and its dimensions in children.

Imagery ability assessments: a cross-disciplinary systematic review and quality evaluation of psychometric properties

BACKGROUND

Over the last two centuries, researchers developed several assessments to evaluate the multidimensional construct of imagery. However, no comprehensive systematic review (SR) exists for imagery ability evaluation methods and an in-depth quality evaluation of their psychometric properties.

METHODS

We performed a comprehensive systematic search in six databases in the disciplines of sport, psychology, medicine, education: SPORTDiscus, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library, Scopus, Web of Science, and ERIC. Two reviewers independently identified and screened articles for selection. COSMIN checklist was used to evaluate the methodological quality of the studies. All included assessments were evaluated for quality using criteria for good measurement properties. The evidence synthesis was summarised by using the GRADE approach.

RESULTS

In total, 121 articles reporting 155 studies and describing 65 assessments were included. We categorised assessments based on their construct on: (1) motor imagery (n = 15), (2) mental imagery (n = 48) and (3) mental chronometry (n = 2). Methodological quality of studies was mainly doubtful or inadequate. The psychometric properties of most assessments were insufficient or indeterminate. The best rated assessments with sufficient psychometric properties were MIQ, MIQ-R, MIQ-3, and VMIQ-2 for evaluation of motor imagery ability. Regarding mental imagery evaluation, only SIAQ and VVIQ showed sufficient psychometric properties.

CONCLUSION

Various assessments exist to evaluate an individual's imagery ability within different dimensions or modalities of imagery in different disciplines. However, the psychometric properties of most assessments are insufficient or indeterminate. Several assessments should be revised and further validated. Moreover, most studies were only evaluated with students. Further cross-disciplinary validation studies are needed including older populations with a larger age range. Our findings allow clinicians, coaches, teachers, and researchers to select a suitable imagery ability assessment for their setting and goals based on information about the focus and quality of the assessments.

SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS REGISTER

PROSPERO CRD42017077004 .

Effect of Motor Imagery Training on Motor Learning in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: There is an urgent need to systematically analyze the growing body of literature on the effect of motor imagery (MI) training in children and adolescents. Methods: Seven databases and clinicaltrials.gov were searched. Two reviewers independently screened references and full texts, and extracted data (studies’ methodology, MI elements, temporal parameters). Two studies were meta-analyzed providing the standard mean difference (SDM). Selected studies were evaluated with the risk of bias (RoB) and GRADE tools. Results: A total of 7238 references were retrieved. The sample size of the 22 included studies, published between 1995 and 2021, ranged from 18 to 136 participants, totaling 934 (nine to 18 years). Studies included healthy pupils, mentally retarded adolescents, children with motor coordination difficulties or with mild mental disabilities. The motor learning tasks focused on upper, lower and whole body movements. SMDs for the primary outcome of pooled studies varied between 0.83 to 1.87 (95% CI, I², T² varied 0.33–3.10; p = 0.001; 0–74%; 0–0.59). RoB varied between some concerns and high risk. GRADE rating was low. Conclusions: MI combined with physical practice (PP) might have a high potential for healthy and impaired children and adolescents. However, important reporting recommendations (PETTLEP, TIDieR, CONSORT) should be followed. The systematic review was registered with PROSPERO: CRD42021237361.

Translation and Validation of the Spanish Movement Imagery Questionnaire Revised Second Version (MIQ-RS)

BACKGROUND

Motor imagery, which emphasizes mental rehearsal of motor skills to improve function, is frequently used in clinical practice. Because of its increasing use, reliable and valid tools are necessary to evaluate motor imagery abilities. However, there are few questionnaires translated and validated into Spanish language.

OBJECTIVE

To translate, transculturally adapt, and validate the Spanish version of the Movement Imagery Questionnaire-Revised Second Version (MIQ-RS).

DESIGN

A single-center observational study.

SETTING

University community.

PARTICIPANTS

One hundred fifty-five healthy participants were recruited.

INTERVENTIONS

Not applicable.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Spanish translation of the MIQ-RS and psychometric performances of the questionnaire were tested using concurrent-criterion and content validity, construct validity, internal consistency, and test-rest reliability. Internal consistency, concurrent-criterion validity, construct validity, and test-rest reliability were assessed with Cronbach´s alpha, Spearman´s correlation coefficient, confirmatory factor analysis, and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), respectively.

RESULTS

Results showed satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach α = 0.90), test-rest reliability (ICC for visual items = 0.844 and for kinesthetic items = 0.70) and content and criterion-concurrent validity (Spearman´s correlation coefficient for visual items, 0.60 and for kinesthetic items, 0.81) of the MIQ-RS Spanish version. The two-factor structure was supported by confirmatory factor analysis. Statistically significant gender differences were observed in mean kinesthetic motor imagery scores and in mean visual motor imagery scores according to sports practice. No significant differences for gender, age, and sports, musical, and dance practice were reported.

CONCLUSIONS

The Spanish version of the MIQ-RS is a valid and reliable tool to assess motor imagery abilities in healthy young people.

Dynamic Modeling of Common Brain Neural Activity in Motor Imagery Tasks

Evaluation of brain dynamics elicited by motor imagery (MI) tasks can contribute to clinical and learning applications. The multi-subject analysis is to make inferences on the group/population level about the properties of MI brain activity. However, intrinsic neurophysiological variability of neural dynamics poses a challenge for devising efficient MI systems. Here, we develop a time-frequency model for estimating the spatial relevance of common neural activity across subjects employing an introduced statistical thresholding rule. In deriving multi-subject spatial maps, we present a comparative analysis of three feature extraction methods: Common Spatial Patterns, Functional Connectivity, and Event-Related De/Synchronization. In terms of interpretability, we evaluate the effectiveness in gathering MI data from collective populations by introducing two assumptions: (i) Non-linear assessment of the similarity between multi-subject data originating the subject-level dynamics; (ii) Assessment of time-varying brain network responses according to the ranking of individual accuracy performed in distinguishing distinct motor imagery tasks (left-hand vs. right-hand). The obtained validation results indicate that the estimated collective dynamics differently reflect the flow of sensorimotor cortex activation, providing new insights into the evolution of MI responses.

Enhanced Multiple Instance Representation Using Time-Frequency Atoms in Motor Imagery Classification

Selection of the time-window mainly affects the effectiveness of piecewise feature extraction procedures. We present an enhanced bag-of-patterns representation that allows capturing the higher-level structures of brain dynamics within a wide window range. So, we introduce augmented instance representations with extended window lengths for the short-time Common Spatial Pattern algorithm. Based on multiple-instance learning, the relevant bag-of-patterns are selected by a sparse regression to feed a bag classifier. The proposed higher-level structure representation promotes two contributions: (i) accuracy improvement of bi-conditional tasks, (ii) A better understanding of dynamic brain behavior through the learned sparse regression fits. Using a support vector machine classifier, the achieved performance on a public motor imagery dataset (left-hand and right-hand tasks) shows that the proposed framework performs very competitive results, providing robustness to the time variation of electroencephalography recordings and favoring the class separability.