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THE POWER OF IMAGERY
NEUROSCIENCE VERSUS FLOWER POWER
Imagery often is "degraded" to a bit of flower-power-touchy-feely stuff, while in actual fact it's neuroscience.
IMAGINING VERSUS DOING
Imagery takes different forms that are important to distinguish.
Visual Imagery
- You know what it is like to imagine an object. Close your eyes and imagine a ballet dancer.
- This is visual imagery.
- You are the spectator.
- Visual imagery engages parts of your brain involved in visual perception and conjures up pictorial memories of what you have seen with your eyes.
Motor or Kinaesthetic Imagery
- Motor or kinaesthetic imagery is the process of imagining a movement.
- Imagine yourself doing a standing Roll Down.
- This is a motor image.
- You are the actor.
- You perform the movement, virtually, in your mind. You aren't using your mind's eye so much as your mind's body.
- Motor imagery engages motor maps involved in motor planning and proprioception.
- It stimulates the inner feeling of an action.
Studies show astonishing results. After one week, motor imagery practice led to nearly the same level of reorganization in the brain as physical practice. As far as your motor cortex (part of your brain dealing with movement) is concerned, executed and imagined movements are almost identical.
While many types of mental practice are undoubtedly helpful, motor imagery is the only technique that alters your brain in the same way physical practice does.
Visual imagery (as from a spectator's point of view), relaxation, hypnosis, affirmation, prayer and other techniques may help you in one way or another, but will not alter how your brain maps movement.
THE EMULATOR WITHIN
When you move your limbs for real, signals are sent to your muscles, your muscles move, and your brain receives feedback. Your body integrates this information to give you a felt body sense of the motion.
But during motor imagery, no signals are sent to your muscles. Instead, they pass through an emulator - a brain circuit that mimics the motor action. When you engage the circuit, your brain experiences a faithful copy of the movement.
Very cool isn't it!
REFERENCE
The Body has a Mind on its own by Sandra & Matthew Blakeslee
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