Mobarezpour Jahangir, Latifi Zahra, Ghaderi Reza
Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.
Science & Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
Basic Clin Neurosci. 2025;16(Spec Issue):323-332. doi: 10.32598/bcn.2023.5705.1. Epub 2025 Mar 18.
Motor imagination is a dynamic mental state that simulates a similar brain mechanism to actual physical movement. This brain mechanism could be traced using Electroencephalography (EEG) recording during motor imagination. Nevertheless, it is still unclear how development changes this mechanism. As the brain mechanism of motor imagination must gain expertise during development to enable a subject to perform better motor actions, we hypothesized that the brain mechanism of imagination in adults must have a more complex pattern of information processing than in children.
We recorded the EEG signals of 10 boys and 9 male adults during right- and left-hand motor imaginations. Subsequently, the complexity of EEG signals was estimated by applying Higuchi's fractal dimension (HFD) to the cleaned EEG data.
The results presented a significant increase of HFD in the adults (P<0.05, family-wised error corrected) in all the EEG channels compared to the children. An increase in HFD presents a more complex pattern of information processing in adults, which advances their ability to perform motor tasks.
This advancement in adults could be created by information compression at higher levels than in children. We hope these findings pave the way to a better understanding brain functions and mechanisms.
运动想象是一种动态心理状态，它模拟与实际身体运动相似的脑机制。在运动想象过程中，可以通过脑电图（EEG）记录来追踪这种脑机制。然而，目前仍不清楚发育过程如何改变这种机制。由于运动想象的脑机制在发育过程中必须获得专业技能，以使个体能够更好地执行运动动作，我们推测成年人运动想象的脑机制在信息处理模式上一定比儿童更复杂。
我们记录了10名男孩和9名成年男性在右手和左手运动想象过程中的脑电信号。随后，通过将Higuchi分形维数（HFD）应用于清理后的脑电数据来估计脑电信号的复杂性。
结果显示，与儿童相比，所有脑电通道中成年人的HFD均显著增加（P<0.05，经家族性错误校正）。HFD的增加表明成年人的信息处理模式更复杂，这提高了他们执行运动任务的能力。
成年人的这种进步可能是由比儿童更高水平的信息压缩产生的。我们希望这些发现为更好地理解脑功能和机制铺平道路。
