Selective impairment of sensorimotor representations following short-term upper-limb immobilization |
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Authors: | Aurore Meugnot Nounagnon Frutueux Agbangla |
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Institution: | Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l'Apprentissage, CeRCA, CNRS/UMR 7295, Université de Poitiers, Poitiers, France |
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Abstract: | In the present experiment, we examined whether short-term upper-limb immobilization would selectively affect the representation of the immobilized limb (using a hand laterality task) or whether the effect of immobilization would extend to another body part (using a foot laterality task). A rigid splint placed on the participants’ left hand was used for immobilization. A control group did not undergo the immobilization procedure. We compared the participants’ performances on the hand and foot laterality tasks before (T1) and after (T2) a 48-hour delay, corresponding to the immobilization period. For controls, response time analysis indicated a benefit of task repetition for the recognition of both hand and foot images. For the immobilized group, a slowdown of performance appeared in T2 for hand images, but not for foot images. The reduced benefit of task repetition following left-hand immobilization appeared for both the immobilized and non-immobilized hand images. These findings revealed that the general cognitive representation of upper-limb movements is affected by the decrease in input/output signal processing due to the left-hand immobilization, while the cognitive representation of lower-limb movements is not. |
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Keywords: | Limb immobilization Hand/foot laterality task Sensorimotor representation Implicit motor imagery |
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