Motor execution and imagination: a comparison of functional connectivity based on connection strength

摘要

Motor tasks, in our daily life, could be performed through execution and imagination. The brain response underlying these movements has been investigated by many studies. Neuroimaging studies have reported that both execution and imagination could activate several brain regions including supplementary motor area(SMA), premotor area(PMA), primary sensorimotor area(Ml/SI), posterior parietal lobe(PPL), striatum, thalamus and cerebellum. These findings were based on the regional activation, and brain regions have been indicated to functionally interact with each other when performing tasks. Therefore further investigation in these brain regions with functional connectivity measurements may provide new insights into the neural mechanism of execution and imagination. As a fundamental measurement of functional connectivity, connection strength of graph theory has been used to identify the key nodes of connection and their strength-priorities. Thus, we performed a comparative investigation between execution and imagination tasks with functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI), and further explored the key nodes of connection and their strength-priorities based on the results of functional activations. Our results revealed that bilateral SMA, contralateral PMA, thalamus and Ml /SI were involved in both tasks as key nodes of connection. These nodes may play important roles in motor control and motor coordination during execution and imagination. Notably, the strength-priorities of contralateral PMA and thalamus were different between the two tasks. Higher strength-priority was detected in PMA for imagination, implicating that motor planning may be more involved in the imagination task.