Motor imagery upper limb training shows similar activation and localization for the non-dominant and dominant sides

Motor imagery (MI) is the mental practice of an action without any physical movement or without any muscle activation. It has been shown that imagination leads to the activation of the brain areas as motor learning. This preliminary study tested a hypothesis whether motor planning and execution change by different brain regions and a reaching-and-grasping MI task for both dominant and nondominant side upper limbs. Results show that for both sides, brain regions’ activations change similarly, before and after movement on-site with statistically significant differences occur throughout the motor strip (left and right) and around the visual cortex. This suggests that for people who have not MI trained before, brain activation is similar regardless of the dominant side of the limb.