title: Motor imagery in spinal cord injured people is modulated by somatotopic coding, perspective taking, and post-lesional chronic pain.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: NPSY-Lab.VR, Department of Philosophy, Education and Psychology, University of Verona, Italy.|IRCCS 'S. Lucia' Foundation, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Scandola
authors.affiliation: IRCCS 'S. Lucia' Foundation, Rome, Italy.|SCNLab, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Salvatore M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Aglioti
authors.affiliation: Center for Neuroprosthetics, School of Life Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.|Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.
authors.forename: Polona
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pozeg
authors.affiliation: Department of Rehabilitation, 'Sacro Cuore Don Calabria' Hospital, Negrar, Italy.
authors.forename: Renato
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Avesani
authors.affiliation: NPSY-Lab.VR, Department of Philosophy, Education and Psychology, University of Verona, Italy.
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-7119-7264
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Moro
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D059350:Chronic Pain / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009068:Movement; D010264:Paraplegia / Q000523:psychology; D010551:Personality; D011782:Quadriplegia / Q000523:psychology; D013119:Spinal Cord Injuries / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: chronic pain; motor imagery; perspective taking; somatotopic plasticity; spinal cord injury