The Study of Visual-Auditory Interactions on Lower Limb Motor Imagery

Abstract

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In order to improve the activation of the mirror neuron system and the ability of the visual-cued motor imagery further, the multi-stimuli-cued unilateral lower limb motor imagery is studied in this paper. The visual-auditory evoked pathway is proposed and the sensory process is studied. To analyze the visual-auditory interactions, the kinesthetic motor imagery with the visual-auditory stimulus, visual stimulus and no stimulus are involved. The motor-related rhythm suppression is applied on quantitative evaluation. To explore the statistical sensory process, the causal relationships among the functional areas and the event-related potentials are investigated. The results have demonstrated the outstanding performances of the visual-auditory evoked motor imagery on the improvement of the mirror neuron system activation and the motor imagery ability. Besides, the abundant information interactions among functional areas and the positive impacts of the auditory stimulus in the motor and the visual areas have been revealed. The possibility that the sensory processes evoked by the visual-auditory interactions differ from the one elicited by kinesthetic motor imagery, has also been indicated. This study will promisingly offer an efficient way to motor rehabilitation, thus favorable for hemiparesis and partial paralysis patients.

Keywords

• visual-auditory interactions
• motor imagery
• mirror neurons
• brain-computer interface
• event-related desynchronization