Motor imagery as a valid complementary method for medical therapies

Background and Aim : Imagination is a cognitive process that is based on internal brain information and not on external environment data by sensory system. Motor imagery is an imagination method which relates to motor system in brain. An important feature in brain motor system is that all of four acts of execution, observation, imitation and imagination of movement have common neural network. For this reason, this neural network is called mirror neuron system. With using this common feature, This paper shows the motor imagination can be used as a complementary for different medical therapies.Methods : The meta analysis of many studies in current years which obtained from PubMed data source show that motor imagery can be used a complementary method for medical therapies in different fields.Results : Results of using of motor imagery in different medical fields contain brain-computer interface (BCI) systems to help the paralyze persons; to improve the motor functions for stroke patients; to recover motor quality of the elderly; to rehabilitate the post-surgical of the upper or lower limb immobilization; and to reduce the chronic musculoskeletal or neuropathic pains. At BCI systems, after training of disable persons, they learn how a motor imagination for a limb is coded for a special function. In this systems, the motor imagery signals for any limb movement is obtained and translated to machine code to perform a special function, such as different functions of a wheelchair. Motor imagery signals at this systems can be the EEG, ECOG or intracortical recording. Of course, the EEG technique as a noninvasive method is more user-friendly and easy to use; but on the other hand it needs a powerful feature extraction and classification technique, because the EEG signals have low signal to noise ratio (SNR).The advantages of BCI system based on motor imagery in comparison to other methods are less training and less attention by disable persons which can be tedious. The logic of using motor imagery for different patients that suffer from immobility is that the imagination a movement causes to reactivate the neural motor network for that movement. This amplifies its circuit and reorganize it to be gained better movement quality. Of course in these cases, studies show that combination of motor imagery and observation of action have more efficiency for rehabilitation. This is due to strengthening the neural motor network by these two methods which called explicit and implicit methods, respectively. The mirror therapy and using the rubber hand illusion are examples for these cases. About reducing chronic pains, although the correlation between pain neural circuit and neural motor system is unclear, but the pain can play the role as a biomechanic constraint for actual movement of the body limbs. So with having this negative correlation, studies show using motor imagery for increasing the motion range of body limbs can reduce chronic pains.Conclusion : So according these up to date results, it is recommended that motor imagination as a complementary medical method to be used more in our country. It is because, using this method is easy and inexpensive and can improve the therapy quality.

کلیدواژه ها:

Motor imagery ، Brain-computer interface ، Brain stroke ، post-surgical limbs immobilization ، chronic pains