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. 2023 Nov 19;13(11):1605.
doi: 10.3390/brainsci13111605.

How Posture and Previous Sensorimotor Experience Influence Muscle Activity during Gait Imagery in Young Healthy Individuals

Barbora Kolářová  1   2 , Marek Tomsa  1   2 , Petr Kolář  1   2 , Hana Haltmar  1   2   3 , Tereza Diatelová  1 , Miroslav Janura  3
Affiliations

How Posture and Previous Sensorimotor Experience Influence Muscle Activity during Gait Imagery in Young Healthy Individuals

Barbora Kolářová et al. Brain Sci. .

Abstract

This study explores how gait imagery (GI) influences lower-limb muscle activity with respect to posture and previous walking experience. We utilized surface electromyography (sEMG) in 36 healthy young individuals aged 24 (±1.1) years to identify muscle activity during a non-gait imagery task (non-GI), as well as GI tasks before (GI-1) and after the execution of walking (GI-2), with assessments performed in both sitting and standing postures. The sEMG was recorded on both lower limbs on the tibialis anterior (TA) and on the gastrocnemius medialis (GM) for all tested tasks. As a result, a significant muscle activity decrease was found in the right TA for GI-1 compared to GI-2 in both sitting (p = 0.008) and standing (p = 0.01) positions. In the left TA, the activity decreased in the sitting posture during non-GI (p = 0.004) and GI-1 (p = 0.009) in comparison to GI-2. No differences were found for GM. The subjective level of imagination difficulty improved for GI-2 in comparison to GI-1 in both postures (p < 0.001). Previous sensorimotor experience with real gait execution and sitting posture potentiate TA activity decrease during GI. These findings contribute to the understanding of neural mechanisms beyond GI.

Keywords: gait; motor imagery; muscle activity; surface electromyography.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors state that there are no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Experimental conditions in the standardized sitting (a) and standing (b) positions.
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