The Study of Object-Oriented Motor Imagery Based on EEG Suppression

Motor imagery is a conventional method for brain computer interface and motor learning. To avoid the great individual difference of the motor imagery ability, object-oriented motor imagery was applied, and the effects were studied. Kinesthetic motor imagery and visual observation were administered to 15 healthy volunteers. The EEG during cue-based simple imagery (SI), object-oriented motor imagery (OI), non-object-oriented motor imagery (NI) and visual observation (VO) was recorded. Study results showed that OI and NI presented significant contralateral suppression in mu rhythm (p < 0.05). Besides, OI exhibited significant contralateral suppression in beta rhythm (p < 0.05). While no significant mu or beta contralateral suppression could be found during VO or SI (p > 0.05). Compared with NI, OI showed significant difference (p < 0.05) in mu rhythm and weak significant difference (p = 0.0612) in beta rhythm over the contralateral hemisphere. The ability of motor imagery can be reflected by the suppression degree of mu and beta frequencies which are the motor related rhythms. Thus, greater enhancement of activation in mirror neuron system is involved in response to object-oriented motor imagery. The object-oriented motor imagery is favorable for improvement of motor imagery ability.