Cued motor imagery in patients with multiple sclerosis

Abstract

Motor imagery (MI) is a promising practice tool in neurorehabilitation. In patients with MS, however, impairments in MI accuracy and temporal organisation were found during clinical assessment, which may limit the benefits of MI practice. Therefore, we investigated whether the MI quality of MS patients could be optimised by means of external cueing. 14 patients with MS and 14 healthy controls physically executed and visually imagined a goal-directed upper limb task in the presence and absence of added visual and auditory cues. MI quality was assessed by means of eye-movement registration. As main results, it was found that MS patients had significant higher eyemovement times than controls during both execution and imagery, and overestimated the to-be-imagined movement amplitude when no external information was provided during imagery. External cues, however, decreased patients’ MI duration and increased the spatial accuracy of their imagined movements. In sum, our results indicate that MS patients imagine movements in a better way when they are provided with external cues during MI. These findings are important for developing rehabilitation strategies based on MI in patients with MS.