Motor imagery while judging object–hand interactions

Because corticospinal excitability, as assessed with transcranial magnetic stimulation, has been repeatedly shown to increase during motor imagery, we used this approach to determine whether appreciating object–hand interactions involves motor imagery. Corticospinal excitability was measured in nine healthy participants who were asked to decide whether a hand presented in a given posture was compatible with the use of an object. The control task consisted in deciding whether two hands were in the same posture; a dimming task was used to determine the baseline. We found a significant increase in corticospinal excitability while judging object–hand interactions in comparison with the two other tasks. This finding suggests that predicting the consequences of an action involves implicit motor imagery.

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