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  4. Motor imagery in spinal cord injured people is modulated by somatotopic coding, perspective taking, and post-lesional chronic pain
 
research article

Motor imagery in spinal cord injured people is modulated by somatotopic coding, perspective taking, and post-lesional chronic pain

Scandola, Michele
•
Aglioti, Salvatore M.
•
Pozeg, Polona
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2017
Journal Of Neuropsychology

Motor imagery (MI) allows one to mentally represent an action without necessarily performing it. Importantly, however, MI is profoundly influenced by the ability to actually execute actions, as demonstrated by the impairment of this ability as a consequence of lesions in motor cortices, limb amputations, movement limiting chronic pain, and spinal cord injury. Understanding MI and its deficits in patients with motor limitations is fundamentally important as development of some brain-computer interfaces and daily life strategies for coping with motor disorders are based on this ability. We explored MI in a large sample of patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) using a comprehensive battery of questionnaires to assess the ability to imagine actions from a first-person or a third-person perspective and also imagine the proprioceptive components of actions. Moreover, we correlated MI skills with personality measures and clinical variables such as the level and completeness of the lesion and the presence of chronic pain. We found that the MI deficits (1) concerned the body parts affected by deafferentation and deefferentation, (2) were present in first- but not in third-person perspectives, and (3) were more altered in the presence of chronic pain. MI is thus closely related to bodily perceptions and representations. Every attempt to devise tools and trainings aimed at improving autonomy needs to consider the cognitive changes due to the body-brain disconnection.

  • Details
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Type
research article
DOI
10.1111/jnp.12098
Web of Science ID

WOS:000408875700001

Author(s)
Scandola, Michele
Aglioti, Salvatore M.
Pozeg, Polona
Avesani, Renato
Moro, Valentina
Date Issued

2017

Publisher

Wiley

Published in
Journal Of Neuropsychology
Volume

11

Issue

3

Start page

305

End page

326

Subjects

spinal cord injury

•

motor imagery

•

somatotopic plasticity

•

perspective taking

•

chronic pain

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
CNP  
Available on Infoscience
October 9, 2017
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/141236
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