Motor Imagery Task Alters Dynamics of Human Body Posture
Fatemeh Delavari, Seyyed Mohammad Reza Hashemi Golpayegani, Mohammad, Ali Ahmadi-Pajouh

TL;DR
This study demonstrates that motor imagery significantly influences human postural control by altering the dynamics of the Center of Pressure, with potential applications in rehabilitation and sports training.
Contribution
It introduces a mathematical model to quantify the impact of motor imagery on COP dynamics and provides empirical evidence of its directional effects on postural stability.
Findings
Motor imagery increases COP path length and Long-Range Correlation during imagined movements.
Significant differences in COP dynamics between MI and normal standing conditions.
Results support the neural activation theory underlying motor imagery effects.
Abstract
Motor Imagery (MI) is gaining traction in both rehabilitation and sports settings, but its immediate influence on human postural control is not yet clearly understood. The focus of this study is to examine the effects of MI on the dynamics of the Center of Pressure (COP), a crucial metric for evaluating postural stability. In the experiment, thirty healthy young adults participated in four different scenarios: normal standing with both open and closed eyes, and kinesthetic motor imagery focused on mediolateral (ML) and anteroposterior (AP) sway movements. A mathematical model was developed to characterize the nonlinear dynamics of the COP and to assess the impact of MI on these dynamics. Our results show a statistically significant increase (p-value<0.05) in variables such as COP path length and Long-Range Correlation (LRC) during MI compared to the closed-eye and normal standing…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsTechnology and Human Factors in Education and Health · Infrared Thermography in Medicine
MethodsSparse Evolutionary Training · Focus · ALIGN
