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Neurological and behavioral features of locomotor imagery in the blind

In people with normal sight, mental simulation (motor imagery) of an experienced action involves a multisensory (especially kinesthetic and visual) emulation process associated with the action. Here, we examined how long-term blindness influences sensory experience during motor imagery and its neuro...

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Autores principales: Amemiya, Kaoru, Morita, Tomoyo, Hirose, Satoshi, Ikegami, Tsuyoshi, Hirashima, Masaya, Naito, Eiichi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8032591/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32240463
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11682-020-00275-w
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author Amemiya, Kaoru
Morita, Tomoyo
Hirose, Satoshi
Ikegami, Tsuyoshi
Hirashima, Masaya
Naito, Eiichi
author_facet Amemiya, Kaoru
Morita, Tomoyo
Hirose, Satoshi
Ikegami, Tsuyoshi
Hirashima, Masaya
Naito, Eiichi
author_sort Amemiya, Kaoru
collection PubMed
description In people with normal sight, mental simulation (motor imagery) of an experienced action involves a multisensory (especially kinesthetic and visual) emulation process associated with the action. Here, we examined how long-term blindness influences sensory experience during motor imagery and its neuronal correlates by comparing data obtained from blind and sighted people. We scanned brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while 16 sighted and 14 blind male volunteers imagined either walking or jogging around a circle of 2 m radius. In the training before fMRI, they performed these actions with their eyes closed. During scanning, we explicitly instructed the blindfolded participants to generate kinesthetic motor imagery. After the experimental run, they rated the degree to which their motor imagery became kinesthetic or spatio-visual. The imagery of blind people was more kinesthetic as per instructions, while that of the sighted group became more spatio-visual. The imagery of both groups commonly activated bilateral frontoparietal cortices including supplementary motor areas (SMA). Despite the lack of group differences in degree of brain activation, we observed stronger functional connectivity between the SMA and cerebellum in the blind group compared to that in the sighted group. To conclude, long-term blindness likely changes sensory emulation during motor imagery to a more kinesthetic mode, which may be associated with stronger functional coupling in kinesthetic brain networks compared with that in sighted people. This study adds valuable knowledge on motor cognition and mental imagery processes in the blind. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11682-020-00275-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-80325912021-04-27 Neurological and behavioral features of locomotor imagery in the blind Amemiya, Kaoru Morita, Tomoyo Hirose, Satoshi Ikegami, Tsuyoshi Hirashima, Masaya Naito, Eiichi Brain Imaging Behav Original Research In people with normal sight, mental simulation (motor imagery) of an experienced action involves a multisensory (especially kinesthetic and visual) emulation process associated with the action. Here, we examined how long-term blindness influences sensory experience during motor imagery and its neuronal correlates by comparing data obtained from blind and sighted people. We scanned brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while 16 sighted and 14 blind male volunteers imagined either walking or jogging around a circle of 2 m radius. In the training before fMRI, they performed these actions with their eyes closed. During scanning, we explicitly instructed the blindfolded participants to generate kinesthetic motor imagery. After the experimental run, they rated the degree to which their motor imagery became kinesthetic or spatio-visual. The imagery of blind people was more kinesthetic as per instructions, while that of the sighted group became more spatio-visual. The imagery of both groups commonly activated bilateral frontoparietal cortices including supplementary motor areas (SMA). Despite the lack of group differences in degree of brain activation, we observed stronger functional connectivity between the SMA and cerebellum in the blind group compared to that in the sighted group. To conclude, long-term blindness likely changes sensory emulation during motor imagery to a more kinesthetic mode, which may be associated with stronger functional coupling in kinesthetic brain networks compared with that in sighted people. This study adds valuable knowledge on motor cognition and mental imagery processes in the blind. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11682-020-00275-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Springer US 2020-04-02 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8032591/ /pubmed/32240463 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11682-020-00275-w Text en © The Author(s) 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Research
Amemiya, Kaoru
Morita, Tomoyo
Hirose, Satoshi
Ikegami, Tsuyoshi
Hirashima, Masaya
Naito, Eiichi
Neurological and behavioral features of locomotor imagery in the blind
title Neurological and behavioral features of locomotor imagery in the blind
title_full Neurological and behavioral features of locomotor imagery in the blind
title_fullStr Neurological and behavioral features of locomotor imagery in the blind
title_full_unstemmed Neurological and behavioral features of locomotor imagery in the blind
title_short Neurological and behavioral features of locomotor imagery in the blind
title_sort neurological and behavioral features of locomotor imagery in the blind
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8032591/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32240463
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11682-020-00275-w
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