Motor Simulation

Research shows that motor imagery practice (MIP) is effective in enhancing skilled performance both in healthy populations and in clinical groups. Despite such findings, relatively little is known about certain cognitive changes induced by, and/or associated with, MIP. In this opinion piece, we consider four such questions. Firstly, how do participants in MIP studies construct procedural representations from the instructions presented to them in imagery scripts? Secondly, what is known about the interaction between working memory (WM) and MIP? Thirdly, how do cognitive representations of covertly rehearsed skills change during MIP? Finally, what aspects of MI skills change over time as a function of MIP? Before addressing these issues, however, we must consider how MIP effects are typically explained.

Coordinated behavior promotes collaboration among humans. To shed light upon this relationship, we investigated whether and how interpersonal coordination is promoted by empathic perspective taking (EPT). In a joint music-making task, pairs of participants rotated electronic music-boxes, producing two streams of musical sounds that were meant to be played synchronously. Participants-who were not musically trained-were assigned to high and low EPT groups based on pre-experimental assessments using a standardized personality questionnaire. Results indicated that high EPT pairs were generally more accurate in synchronizing their actions. When instructed to lead the interaction, high and low EPT leaders were equally cooperative with followers, making their performance tempo more regular, presumably in order to increase their predictability and help followers to synchronize. Crucially, however, high EPT followers were better able to use this information to predict leaders' behavior and thus improve interpersonal synchronization. Thus, empathic perspective taking promotes interpersonal coordination by enhancing accuracy in predicting others' behavior while leaving the aptitude for cooperation unaltered. We argue that such predictive capacity relies on a sensorimotor mechanism responsible for simulating others' actions in an anticipatory manner, leading to behavioral advantages that may impact social cognition on a broad scale. Synchronous behavior is a universal means of communication and cooperation observable in diverse species 1-4. In humans, this kind of behavior can be witnessed during activities such as audiences clapping their hands in unison, military units marching, or groups of athletes or dancers coordinating their movements in space and time 5-9. Joint music making is a pervasive example of this phenomenon 10. Even a group of perfect strangers might end up singing together, for example during a competitive sporting game or a religious ritual-more likely so if the individuals support the same team, or believe in the same god, of course. When multiple individuals coordinate their movements in order to achieve interpersonal synchrony, the group benefits in terms of enhanced interpersonal bonding and social cohesion 11,12. Such pro-social effects of interpersonal synchronization have been reported in numerous laboratory studies using a variety of tasks 13-23. For instance, dyadic finger tapping in synchrony is more likely to increase feelings of affiliation 18 , trust, and likeability 16,24. These effects appear early in ontogenetic development, as evidenced by the finding that 14-month old infants, if moved in synchrony with another individual by an experimenter, are subsequently more likely to engage in cooperative helping behavior with that individual 19,25. Even the mere observation of synchronous group behavior can augment perceived social cohesion 26,27. These previous studies demonstrated that interpersonal synchrony is a sufficient condition to boost inter-personal pro-social processes. However, this is only one part of the story. Complementarily to these observations , some studies have shown that social personality traits can also affect interpersonal coordination skills. For instance, in one study, it was reported that individuals affected by Social Anxiety Disorder are impaired in leading a task requiring interpersonal coordination 28. Another study showed that individuals who have high internal Locus of Control (according to a questionnaire assessing to what extent individuals assume life events to be contingent on their personal behavior) are relatively good leaders in the sense that they prioritize stabilizing their own action timing over synchronization with an unreliable virtual partner 29. Taken alongside the above evidence, these results suggest that the link between synchrony and prosociality might be bidirectional: increased

Resumen: En esta práctica se realiza la simulación de un motor de inducción de 30 kw trifásico, el cual previamente se calculó a mano sus parámetros magnéticos y eléctricos, la simulación se realizó en el software femm, y con esta práctica se pretende ver si los datos obtenidos en clase sin similares a los obtenidos en el software para corroborar nuestro diseño.

Perceiving pain in others may induce the covert simulation of both sensory and emotional components of others' pain experience. Previous transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have investigated the motor counterpart of this resonant mapping by showing suppression of motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) during the observation of a needle entering body parts of another person. Here we explored whether MEPs recorded from an onlooker's hand (e.g., the right hand, TMS to the left motor cortex) are differentially influenced by the observation of painfully stimuli delivered to the same (right) or the opposite (left) hand in a model. Congruency between observed (model) and recorded (onlooker) hand brought about a reduction of MEPs amplitude. This resonant inhibitory response in the onlooker was specific for the muscle penetrated in the model. In contrast, observing pain on the model's hand opposite to that from which MEPs were recorded brought about a generalized increase of hand corticospinal excitability. Corticospinal inhibition and facilitation effects were comparable in the two hemispheres and specific for the corresponding and opposite hand. Results suggest that observing pain in another person's hand automatically induces the covert simulation of potentially adaptive freezing and avoidance responses in the onlooker's corticospinal system.

We have previously shown that passively observing a task-irrelevant rhythmical action can bias the cycle time of a subsequently executed rhythmical action. Here we use the same paradigm to investigate the impact of different forms of motor imagery (MI) during action observation (AO) on this automatic imitation (AI) effect. Participants saw a picture of the instructed action followed by a rhythmical distractor movie, wherein cycle time was subtly manipulated across trials. They then executed the instructed rhythmical action. When participants imagined performing the instructed action in synchrony with the distractor action (AO + MI), a strong imitation bias was found that was significantly greater than in our previous study. The bias was pronounced equally for compatible and incompatible trials, wherein observed and imagined actions were different in type (e.g., face washing vs. painting) or plane of movement, or both. In contrast, no imitation bias was observed when MI conflicted wi...

Brief Familiarization Primes Covert Imitation in 9-month-old Infants Bennett I. Bertenthal (bbertent@indiana.edu) Ty W. Boyer (tywboyer@indiana.edu) Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences 1101 E. Tenth St. Bloomington, IN 47405 USA Abstract Previous research reveals that 9-month-old infants who passively observe an experimenter search repeatedly for a toy in the Piagetian A-not-B error task covertly imitate these actions and manually search incorrectly when the toy is hidden in the B-location. Two experiments tested whether infants would also search incorrectly if the experimenter was replaced by a pair of mechanical claws or if the experimenter performed less familiar actions. Although infants did not commit the search error when tested directly without any familiarization to the novel actions, a significant majority of infants committed the search error following two minutes of familiarization with the actions performed on the A trials. These results converge to suggest th...

Background: One’s own motor system is activated by viewing and imaging another person performance. Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the motor simulation in prediction of interpersonal coordination among jumping rope elite boys. Methodology: An applied research was done as a single-stage case study with 14 jumping rope elite boys (13-18 years). The subjects practiced the jumping rope tasks (jumping rope in different distances and online landing) for four months, until they could do them properly and without any online feedbacks. This study used a Vicon motion analysis device with six infrared cameras capable of 120 frames per seconds to record three-dimensional movements of the legs and rope whirling. Results: The results of one-way ANOVA showed that with enough practice, movement onset time, hand-foot deviation time, timing variation in rope whirling, and landing time of joint groups were equal while a significant difference was observed in movement time and jump height between them (P≤0.05). Conclusion:) When people simulate a partner’s performance to do joint coordination, they may be relying on internal models that govern the interpersonal coordination. Indeed by increasing difficulty of task and so by increasing joint task demands, degree of interpersonal coordination would increase.