Acute Stress Does Not Affect Motor Imagery Ability in Young, Healthy Participants: A Randomized Trial.

Motor imagery (MI) is the mental representation of a movement without its execution. It activates internal representations of the movement without external stimulus through different memory-related processes. Although acute stress is frequent in the population and affects supraspinal structures essential for memory functionality, it is still unknown how that stress affects MI capacity and temporal congruence (TC) between execution and movement imagination. This study aimed to discover how acute stress may influence MI capacity and TC in the subscales of internal and external visual imagery and kinesthetic imagery. A double-blind, randomized trial was conducted. Sixty-two young, healthy subjects (mean age = 20.65 [2.54]; 39 females and 23 males) unfamiliar with the assessment and uses of MI were recruited. Participants were assigned by stratified randomization to the stress group or the control group. Stress was induced by the Maastricht Acute Stress Test (MAST), while the control group performed the MAST control protocol. MI capacity and TC were assessed before (t1) and after (t2) MAST stress or control using the Movement Imagery Questionnaire-3 (MIQ-3). Electrodermal activity and heart rate variability were further recorded as control variables to assess stress induction. Thirty subjects in the stress group and 26 subjects in the control group were analyzed. No significant group differences were observed when comparing MI capacity or TC in any subscales. These findings suggest that acute stress does not significantly affect MI capacity or TC in young, healthy, non-experienced MI subjects. MI could thus be a relevant helpful technique in stressful situations.

Examining the Equivalence Between Imagery and Execution-Does Imagery Comprise the Intended Spatial Trajectory?

The functional equivalence model suggests a common internal representation initiates both imagery and execution. This suggestion is supported by the mental chronometry effect, where there is a positive relation between task difficulty (as defined by the Index of Difficulty; ID) and imagined movement time. The present study extends this logic by examining whether imagery captures the spatial trajectory. Participants were initially tasked with the imagery and execution of a rapid aiming movement under different IDs. These initial attempts were adapted to configure auditory tones at early (25%) and late (75%) intervals for a separate set of imagery trials. If a tone had sounded, participants had to estimate post-trial where their imagined limb would have been located. The findings revealed increases in ID that coincided with increases in imagined and executed movement times. However, participant mean and standard deviation of estimated locations revealed limited differences between the early and late tones. Further inspection revealed some evidence for these estimated locations shifting further along in space following more rapid imagined movements. While equivalence is clearly evident within the temporal domain, there is comparatively little to suggest that this logic extends to the resolution required for simulating the spatial characteristics of movement.

Evaluating mental chronometry as a quantitative measure of information processing in early childhood autism.

OBJECTIVES: Mental chronometry is the scientific study of cognitive processing speed measured by reaction time (RT), which is the elapsed time between the onset of a stimulus and an individual's response. This study aims at measuring the RT among young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and comparing it with normal (typically developing) children. METHODS: 60 ASD children were selected from different ASD centers, and 60 normal children were selected from different kindergartens for participation in this study. Participants were aged 3-6 years old. The RT was measured using the Fitlight trainer device. The findings were statistically evaluated using independent t-tests and ANOVA tests. RESULT: Significant differences (p < 0.0001) were found between both groups in all tasks, and ASD children demonstrated slower RT compared to the normal group. The RT measured through three senses (visual, auditory, and touch) for ASD and normal were 3.64 ± 2.16, 13.19 ± 2.41(trial), 1835.23 ± 757.95, 697.12 ± 87.83 (second), and 1550.89 ± 499.76, 752.67 ± 124.02 (second) respectively. CONCLUSION: The evaluated RT showed significant impairment in RT among ASD in comparison to normal children and this was true for the three senses. The Fitlight trainer could be used to assess RT and stimulus-response among ASD children in various cognitive tasks. Similar studies, involving larger samples from different areas and involving other sense organs, are indicated to confirm the results.

Implicit and explicit motor imagery ability after SCI: Moving the elbow makes the difference.

Cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) causes dramatic sensorimotor deficits that restrict both activity and participation. Restoring activity and participation requires extensive upper limb rehabilitation focusing elbow and wrist movements, which can include motor imagery. Yet, it remains unclear whether MI ability is impaired or spared after SCI. We investigated implicit and explicit MI ability in individuals with C6 or C7 SCI (SCIC6 and SCIC7 groups), as well as in age- and gender-matched controls without SCI. Inspired by previous studies, implicit MI evaluations involved hand laterality judgments, hand orientation judgments (HOJT) and hand-object interaction judgments. Explicit MI evaluations involved mental chronometry assessments of physically possible or impossible movements due to the paralysis of upper limb muscles in both groups of participants with SCI. HOJT was the paradigm in which implicit MI ability profiles differed the most between groups, particularly in the SCIC6 group who had impaired elbow movements in the horizontal plane. MI ability profiles were similar between groups for explicit MI evaluations, but reflected task familiarity with higher durations in the case of unfamiliar movements in controls or attempt to perform movements which were no longer possible in persons with SCI. Present results, obtained from a homogeneous population of individuals with SCI, suggest that people with long-term SCI rely on embodied cognitive motor strategies, similar to controls. Differences found in behavioral response pattern during implicit MI mirrored the actual motor deficit, particularly during tasks that involved internal representations of affected body parts.

Let's do it: Response times in Mental Paper Folding and its execution.

Action imagery is the ability to mentally simulate the execution of an action without physically performing it. Action imagery is assumed to rely at least partly on similar mechanisms as action execution. Therefore, we expected that imagery and execution durations would be constrained by the number of folds in a Paper Folding Task. Analogously, individual differences in execution durations were expected to be reflected in imagery durations. Twenty-eight participants performed two imagery conditions (computer vs. paper) and one execution condition (paper) where two-dimensional grids of a three-dimensional cube were (mentally) folded to determine whether two selected edges overlapped or not. As expected, imagery performance and execution performance were strongly correlated and decreased with the number of folds. Further, the number of folds influenced imagery durations even more than execution durations. This may be due to the additional cognitive load in imagery that emerges when tracking the folds to follow up with the next ones. The results indicate that Mental Paper Folding predominantly involves dynamic visual representations that are not functionally associated with one's own movements as in action imagery.

Coupling of saccade plans to endogenous attention during urgent choices.

The neural mechanisms that willfully direct attention to specific locations in space are closely related to those for generating targeting eye movements (saccades). However, the degree to which the voluntary deployment of attention to a location necessarily activates a corresponding saccade plan remains unclear. One problem is that attention and saccades are both automatically driven by salient sensory events; another is that the underlying processes unfold within tens of milliseconds only. Here, we use an urgent task design to resolve the evolution of a visuomotor choice on a moment-by-moment basis while independently controlling the endogenous (goal-driven) and exogenous (salience-driven) contributions to performance. Human participants saw a peripheral cue and, depending on its color, either looked at it (prosaccade) or looked at a diametrically opposite, uninformative non-cue (antisaccade). By varying the luminance of the stimuli, the exogenous contributions could be cleanly dissociated from the endogenous process guiding the choice over time. According to the measured timecourses, generating a correct antisaccade requires about 30 ms more processing time than generating a correct prosaccade based on the same perceptual signal. The results indicate that saccade plans elaborated during fixation are biased toward the location where attention is endogenously deployed, but the coupling is weak and can be willfully overridden very rapidly.

Motor imagery ability in children and adolescents with cerebral palsy: a systematic review and evidence map.

Background: Cerebral palsy (CP) refers to a group of permanent movement and posture disorders. Motor imagery (MI) therapy is known to provide potential benefits, but data on MI ability in children and adolescents with CP is lacking. Objective: A systematic review was performed to explore MI abilities in children and adolescents with CP compared to typically developed (TD) subjects. Methods: We searched on PubMed, Web of Science (WOS), EBSCO, Google Scholar, and PEDro including observational studies. Methodological quality was assessed with the modified Newcastle-Ottawa Scale and evidence map was created to synthesize the evidence qualitatively and quantitatively. Results: Seven cross-sectional studies were selected, which included 174 patients with CP and 321 TD subjects. Three studies explored explicit MI, two MI-execution synchrony, and four implicit MI domains. Methodological quality ranged from 6 to 8 stars. Moderate evidence supported the absence of differences in vividness between the groups. As there was only limited evidence, establishing a clear direction for the results was not possible, especially for the capacity to generate MI, mental chronometry features, and MI-execution synchrony domains. Moderate evidence supported a lower efficiency in cases for hand recognition, derived from a lower accuracy rate, while reaction time remained similar between the two groups. Moderate evidence indicated that patients with CP and TD controls showed similar features on whole-body recognition. Conclusion: Moderate evidence suggests that patients with CP present a reduced ability in hand recognition, which is not observed for whole-body recognition compared to healthy controls. Severe limitations concerning sample size calculations and validity of assessment tools clearly limits establishing a direction of results, especially for explicit MI and MI-Execution synchrony domains. Further research is needed to address these limitations to enhance our comprehension of MI abilities in children, which is crucial for prescribing suitable MI-based therapies in this child population.

Integrating cognition in the laboratory with cognition in the real world: the time cognition takes, task fidelity, and finding tasks when they are mixed together.

It is now possible for real-life activities, unfolding over their natural range of temporal and spatial scales, to become the primary targets of cognitive studies. Movement toward this type of research will require an integrated methodological approach currently uncommon in the field. When executed hand in hand with thorough and ecologically valid empirical description, properly developed laboratory tasks can serve as model systems to capture the essentials of a targeted real-life activity. When integrated together, data from these two kinds of studies can facilitate causal analysis and modeling of the mental and neural processes that govern that activity, enabling a fuller account than either method can provide on its own. The resulting account, situated in the activity's natural environmental, social, and motivational context, can then enable effective and efficient development of interventions to support and improve the activity as it actually unfolds in real time. We believe that such an integrated multi-level research program should be common rather than rare and is necessary to achieve scientifically and societally important goals. The time is right to finally abandon the boundaries that separate the laboratory from the outside world.

Constraints on hand-foot coordination associated with phase dependent modulation of corticospinal excitability during motor imagery.

Interlimb coordination involving cyclical movements of hand and foot in the sagittal plane is more difficult when the limbs move in opposite directions compared with the same direction (directional constraint). Here we first investigated whether the directional constraint on hand-foot coordination exists in motor imagery (imagined motion). Participants performed 10 cyclic coordinated movements of right wrist flexion-extension and right ankle dorsiflexion-plantarflexion as quickly and precisely as possible, in the following three conditions; (1) actual movements of the two limbs, (2) imaginary movements of the two limbs, and (3) actual movement of one limb combined with imaginary movement of the other limb. Each condition was performed under two directions; the same and the opposite direction. Task execution duration was measured as the time between the first and second press of a button by the participants. The opposite directional movement took a significantly longer time than did the same directional movement, irrespective of the condition type. This suggests that directional constraint of hand-foot coordination occurs even in motor imagery without actual motor commands or kinesthetic signals. We secondarily examined whether the corticospinal excitability of wrist muscles is modulated in synchronization with an imaginary foot movement to estimate the neural basis of directional constraint on imaginary hand-foot coordination. The corticospinal excitability of the forearm extensor in resting position increased during dorsiflexion and decreased during plantarflexion similarly in both actual and imaginary foot movements. This corticospinal modulation depending on imaginary movement phase likely produces the directional constraint on the imaginary hand-foot coordination.

Pupil dilation scales with movement distance of real but not of imagined reaching movements.

Pupillary responses have been reliably identified for cognitive and motor tasks, but less is known about their relation to mentally simulated movements (known as motor imagery). Previous work found pupil dilations during the execution of simple finger movements, where peak pupillary dilation scaled with the complexity of the finger movement and force required. Recently, pupillary dilations were reported during imagery of grasping and piano playing. Here, we examined whether pupillary responses are sensitive to the dynamics of the underlying motor task for both executed and imagined reach movements. Participants reached or imagined reaching to one of three targets placed at different distances from a start position. Both executed and imagined movement times scaled with target distance, and they were highly correlated, confirming previous work and suggesting that participants did imagine the respective movement. Increased pupillary dilation was evident during motor execution compared with rest, with stronger dilations for larger movements. Pupil dilations also occurred during motor imagery, however, they were generally weaker than those during motor execution and they were not influenced by imagined movement distance. Instead, dilations during motor imagery resembled pupil responses obtained during a nonmotor imagery task (imagining a previously viewed painting). Our results demonstrate that pupillary responses can reliably capture the dynamics of an executed goal-directed reaching movement, but suggest that pupillary responses during imagined reaching movements reflect general cognitive processes, rather than motor-specific components related to the simulated dynamics of the sensorimotor system.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Pupil size is influenced by the performance of cognitive and motor tasks. Here, we demonstrate that pupil size increases not only during execution but also during mental simulation of goal-directed reaching movements. However, pupil dilations scale with movement amplitude of executed but not of imagined movement, whereas they are similar during motor imagery and a nonmotor imagery task.

Revisiting Motor Imagery Guidelines in a Tropical Climate: The Time-of-Day Effect.

(1) Background: Motor imagery (MI) is relevantly used to improve motor performance and promote rehabilitation. As MI ability and vividness can be affected by circadian modulation, it has been proposed that MI should ideally be performed between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Whether such a recommendation remains effective in a hot and humid environment, such as a tropical climate, remains unknown. (2) Methods: A total of 35 acclimatized participants completed a MI questionnaire and a mental chronometry test at 7 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m., and 6 p.m. Visual (VI) and kinesthetic imagery (KI) abilities, as well as temporal congruence between actual walking and MI, were collected. Ambient temperature, chronotypes, thermal comfort, affect, and fatigue were also measured. (3) Results: VI scores were higher at 6 p.m. than at 7 a.m., 11 a.m., and 2 p.m., and temporal congruence was higher at 6 p.m. than at 7 a.m. Comfort, thermal sensation, and positive affect scores were higher at 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. (4) Conclusion: Data support greater imagery ability and accuracy when participants perceive the environment as more pleasant and comfortable. MI guidelines typically provided in neutral climates should therefore be adapted to tropical climates, with MI training sessions ideally scheduled in the late afternoon.

Imagined Timed Up and Go test (iTUG) in people with Parkinson's Disease: test-retest reliability and validity.

PURPOSE: To determine the test-retest reliability and validity of the Imagined Timed Up and Go Test (iTUG) as a Motor Imagery measure of temporal accuracy in people with Parkinson's Disease (PD). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A descriptive study was conducted following the GRRAS recommendations. Thirty-two people with idiopathic, mild to moderate PD (Hoehn and Yahr I-III), without cognitive impairment (MMSE ≥ 24), were assessed twice (7-15 days apart) with the iTUG. The absolute unadjusted difference in seconds, and the absolute adjusted difference as percentage of estimation error, between real and imagined TUG times, were calculated as outcome measures. Test-retest reliability was assessed using a two-way mixed-effects model of the ICC. Construct validity was tested with the Imagined Box and Blocks Test (iBBT) and convergent validity with clinical characteristics of PD, using the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. RESULTS: The ICC for the unadjusted and adjusted measures of the iTUG was ICC = 0.61 and ICC = 0.55, respectively. Correlations between iTUG and iBBT were not statistically significant. The iTUG was partially correlated to clinical characteristics of PD. CONCLUSIONS: Test-retest reliability of the iTUG was moderate. Construct validity between iTUG and iBBT was poor, so caution should be taken when using them concurrently to assess imagery's temporal accuracy.

In people with Parkinson's Disease (PD), the absolute unadjusted difference (in seconds) and the absolute adjusted difference (as a percentage of estimation error) of the Imagined Timed Up and Go test (iTUG) were moderately reliable.iTUG and Imagined Box and Blocks Test (iBBT) measures were not statistically correlated. Therefore, temporal accuracy measures of Motor Imagery are highly task-dependant and thus their construct validity is poor.Correlations between the adjusted and unadjusted measures of the iTUG and the majority of clinical variables of PD were not statistically significant. Statistically significant correlations were only found between the unadjusted difference and MDS-UPDRS Part III, Schwab and England, and Berg Balance scales, as well as the adjusted difference and disease duration.

Using crutches during walking possibly reduces gait imagery accuracy among healthy young and older adults.

[Purpose] Although crutches are widely used in the field of rehabilitation to improve gait performance, patients usually have difficulties using them, and this may increase their risks for falls. This study aimed to define the accuracy of gait imagery during walking with and without crutches, in healthy young and older adults, using the mental chronometry method. [Participants and Methods] Overall, 99 healthy young (mean age, 20.2 ± 1.0 years) and 39 healthy older adults (mean age, 71.3 ± 2.9 years) performed the imagery and execution tasks, which involved walking through a distance of 10 meters both with and without crutches. Using the mental chronometry method, the accuracy of the motor imagery was defined as the difference between the imagery time and the actual execution time. Two-way analysis of variance and one-sample t-tests were performed to evaluate the accuracy of the gait imagery. [Results] Both the young and older adults significantly overestimated their gait speeds when using crutches; the overestimation was larger among the older adults. [Conclusion] The overestimations indicate that participants estimated their gait speeds with crutches to be faster than their actual speeds. Therefore, using crutches decreased the accuracy of gait imagery and might therefore increase an individual's risk of falling during walking.

Reaction Time Decomposition as a Tool to Study Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Cognitive Impairment.

BACKGROUND: The study of reaction time (RT) and its intraindividual variability (IIV) in aging, cognitive impairment, and dementia typically fails to investigate the processing stages that contribute to an overall response. Applying "mental chronometry" techniques makes it possible to separately assess the role of processing components during environmental interaction. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether RT and IIV-decomposition techniques can shed light on the nature of underlying deficits in subcortical ischemic vascular cognitive impairment (VCI). Using a novel iPad task, we examined whether VCI deficits occur during both initiation and movement phases of a response, and whether they are equally reflected in both RT and IIV. METHODS: Touch cancellation RT and its IIV were measured in a group of younger adults (n = 22), cognitively healthy older adults (n = 21), and patients with VCI (n = 21) using an iPad task. RESULTS: Whereas cognitively healthy aging affected the speed (RT) of response initiation and movement but not its variability (IIV), VCI resulted in both slowed RT and increased IIV for both response phases. Furthermore, there were group differences with respect to response phase. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that IIV can be more sensitive than absolute RT in separating VCI from normal aging. Furthermore, compared to cognitively healthy aging, VCI was characterized by significant deficits in planning/initiating action as well as performing movements. Such deficits have important implications for real life actions such as driving safety, employment, and falls risk.

Motor Imagery of Walking in People Living with and without Multiple Sclerosis: A Cross-Sectional Comparison of Mental Chronometry.

Motor imagery represents the ability to simulate anticipated movements mentally prior to their actual execution and has been proposed as a tool to assess both individuals' perception of task difficulty as well as their perception of their own abilities. People with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) often present with motor and cognitive dysfunction, which may negatively affect motor imagery. In this cross-sectional study, we explored differences in motor imagery of walking performance between pwMS (n = 20, age = 57.1 (SD = 8.6) years, 55% female) and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (n = 20, age = 58.1 (SD = 7.0) years, 60% female). Participants underwent mental chronometry assessments, a subset of motor imagery, which evaluated the difference between imagined and actual walking times across four walking tasks of increasing difficulty (i.e., large/narrow-width walkway with/without obstacles). Raw and absolute mental chronometry (A-MC) measures were recorded in single- (ST) and dual-task (DT) conditions. In ST conditions, pwMS had higher A-MC scores across all walking conditions (p ≤ 0.031, η2 ≥ 0.119), indicating lower motor imagery ability compared to healthy controls. During DT, all participants tended to underestimate their walking ability (3.38 ± 6.72 to 5.63 ± 9.17 s). However, after physical practice, pwMS were less able to adjust their imagined walking performance compared to healthy controls. In pwMS, A-MC scores were correlated with measures of balance confidence (ρ = -0.629, p < 0.01) and the self-reported expanded disability status scale (ρ = 0.747, p < 0.01). While the current study revealed that pwMS have lower motor imagery of walking performance compared to healthy individuals, further work is necessary to examine how the disassociation between mental chronometry and actual performance relates to quality of life and well-being.

Comparison of Different Response Time Outlier Exclusion Methods: A Simulation Study.

In response time (RT) research, RT outliers are typically excluded from statistical analysis to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Nevertheless, there exist several methods for outlier exclusion. This poses the question, how these methods differ with respect to recovering the uncontaminated RT distribution. In the present simulation study, two RT distributions with a given population difference were simulated in each iteration. RTs were replaced by outliers following two different approaches. The first approach generated outliers at the tails of the distribution, the second one inserted outliers overlapping with the genuine RT distribution. We applied ten different outlier exclusion methods and tested, how many pairs of distributions significantly differed. Outlier exclusion methods were compared in terms of bias. Bias was defined as the deviation of the proportion of significant differences after outlier exclusion from the proportion of significant differences in the uncontaminated samples (before introducing outliers). Our results showed large differences in bias between the exclusion methods. Some methods showed a high rate of Type-I errors and should therefore clearly not be used. Overall, our results showed that applying an exclusion method based on z-scores / standard deviations introduced only small biases, while the absence of outlier exclusion showed the largest absolute bias.

Moving Beyond the Keypress: As Technology Advances, so Should Psychology Response Time Measurements.

Decades of research in cognitive psychology have largely relied on simple key or button presses to quantify human behavior. While many valuable discoveries have been made, a richer response modality may reveal more information regarding the different processes that underlie complex human behavior. This study provides a proof of concept for using a touch-and-swipe response method to separate response time into two components to extract more meaningful behavioral insights. Across several analyses, the two components were consistently shown to be separable, independent measurements of behavior. Furthermore, evaluating these isolated response time components improved inferential power and clarity of behavioral patterns. The touch-and-swipe response method is simple and easy-to-use, and it shows promise for more accurately targeting mechanisms of interest.

The effects of visual impairment on motor imagery in children and adolescents.

BACKGROUND: While the development of motor imagery (MI) has been extensively studied in sighted children, it is not clear how children with different severities of visual impairment (VI) represent motor actions by using the motor representations constructed through the remaining intact senses, especially touch. AIMS: Mental chronometry and generation/manipulation of MI were examined in children with and without VI. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Participants included 64 youth with and without VI (33 without visual impairments, 14 moderate-to-severe, and 17 blind). Mental chronometry was assessed with the imagined Timed-Up-and-Go-Test (iTUG), and generation/manipulation of MI with the Controllability-of-Motor-Imagery-Test (CMI). In addition, the effect of working memory performance (Letter-Number-Sequencing) and physical activity upon MI were evaluated. RESULTS: Mental duration for the iTUG was significantly shorter than the active durations. Results also provided evidence of better haptic representation than motor representation in all participants; however, only for the CMI-regeneration condition controls outperformed children with visual impairments and blindness (CVIB). Exercise and working memory performance showed a significant contribution only on a few MI tests. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Our results suggest a possible relationship between motor performance, body representation deficits and visual impairment which needs to be addressed in the evaluation and treatment of CVIB. The design of new rehabilitation interventions that focus on strengthening adequate body perception and representation should be proposed and tested to promote motor development in CVIB.

Are divergence point analyses suitable for response time data?

Estimating the time course of the influence of different factors in human performance is one of the major topics of research in cognitive psychology/neuroscience. Over the past decades, researchers have proposed several methods to tackle this question using latency data. Here we examine a recently proposed procedure that employs survival analyses on latency data to provide precise estimates of the timing of the first discernible influence of a given factor (e.g., word frequency on lexical access) on performance (e.g., fixation durations or response times). A number of articles have used this method in recent years, and hence an exploration of its strengths and its potential weaknesses is in order. Unfortunately, our analysis revealed that the technique has conceptual flaws, and it might lead researchers into believing that they are obtaining a measurement of processing components when, in fact, they are obtaining an uninterpretable measurement.

Effects of a single mental chronometry training session in subacute stroke patients - a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Motor imagery training might be helpful in stroke rehabilitation. This study explored if a single session of motor imagery (MI) training induces performance changes in mental chronometry (MC), motor execution, or changes of motor excitability. METHODS: Subacute stroke patients (n = 33) participated in two training sessions. The order was randomized. One training consisted of a mental chronometry task, the other training was a hand identification task, each lasting 30 min. Before and after the training session, the Box and Block Test (BBT) was fully executed and also performed as a mental version which served as a measure of MC. A subgroup analysis based on the presence of sensory deficits was performed. Patients were allocated to three groups (no sensory deficits, moderate sensory deficits, severe sensory deficits). Motor excitability was measured by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pre and post training. Amplitudes of motor evoked potentials at rest and during pre-innervation as well as the duration of cortical silent period were measured in the affected and the non-affected hand. RESULTS: Pre-post differences of MC showed an improved MC after the MI training, whereas MC was worse after the hand identification training. Motor execution of the BBT was significantly improved after mental chronometry training but not after hand identification task training. Patients with severe sensory deficits performed significantly inferior in BBT execution and MC abilities prior to the training session compared to patients without sensory deficits or with moderate sensory deficits. However, pre-post differences of MC were similar in the 3 groups. TMS results were not different between pre and post training but showed significant differences between affected and unaffected side. CONCLUSION: Even a single training session can modulate MC abilities and BBT motor execution in a task-specific way. Severe sensory deficits are associated with poorer motor performance and poorer MC ability, but do not have a negative impact on training-associated changes of mental chronometry. Studies with longer treatment periods should explore if the observed changes can further be expanded. TRIAL REGISTRATION: DRKS, DRKS00020355, registered March 9th, 2020, retrospectively registered.