Rieger Martina, Dahm Stephan F, Koch Iring
Medical Informatics and Technology, Institute for Psychology, UMIT - University for Health Sciences, Hall in Tirol, Austria.
Institute of Psychology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2017 Apr;24(2):459-466. doi: 10.3758/s13423-016-1095-5.
Motor imagery requires that actual movements are prevented (i.e., inhibited) from execution. To investigate at what level inhibition takes place in motor imagery, we developed a novel action mode switching paradigm. Participants imagined (indicating only start and end) and executed movements from start buttons to target buttons, and we analyzed trial sequence effects. Trial sequences depended on current action mode (imagination or execution), previous action mode (pure blocks/same mode, mixed blocks/same mode, or mixed blocks/other mode), and movement sequence (action repetition, hand repetition, or hand alternation). Results provided evidence for global inhibition (indicated by switch benefits in execution-imagination (E-I)-sequences in comparison to I-I-sequences), effector-specific inhibition (indicated by hand repetition costs after an imagination trial), and target inhibition (indicated by target repetition benefits in I-I-sequences). No evidence for subthreshold motor activation or action-specific inhibition (inhibition of the movement of an effector to a specific target) was obtained. Two (global inhibition and effector-specific inhibition) of the three observed mechanisms are active inhibition mechanisms. In conclusion, motor imagery is not simply a weaker form of execution, which often is implied in views focusing on similarities between imagination and execution.
运动想象要求阻止（即抑制）实际动作的执行。为了研究运动想象中抑制发生在何种水平，我们开发了一种新颖的动作模式切换范式。参与者想象（仅指示开始和结束）并执行从起始按钮到目标按钮的动作，我们分析了试验序列效应。试验序列取决于当前动作模式（想象或执行）、先前动作模式（纯块/相同模式、混合块/相同模式或混合块/其他模式）以及动作序列（动作重复、手部重复或手部交替）。结果为全局抑制（与想象-想象（I-I）序列相比，执行-想象（E-I）序列中的切换益处表明）、效应器特异性抑制（想象试验后手部重复成本表明）和目标抑制（I-I序列中的目标重复益处表明）提供了证据。未获得阈下运动激活或动作特异性抑制（抑制效应器向特定目标的运动）的证据。观察到的三种机制中的两种（全局抑制和效应器特异性抑制）是主动抑制机制。总之，运动想象并非简单地是一种较弱的执行形式，而这在关注想象与执行之间相似性的观点中常常被暗示。
