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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on February 21, 2008
Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(10):2382-2390; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn005
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Kinesthetic Imagery and Tool-Specific Modulation of Corticospinal Representations in Expert Tennis Players

Alissa D. Fourkas1,4, Valerio Bonavolontà2, Alessio Avenanti1,3,5 and Salvatore M. Aglioti1,3

1 Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli studi di Roma "La Sapienza," I-00185 Roma, Italia, 2 Dipartimento di Scienze della Salute, Istituto Universitario di Scienze Motorie, I-00194 Roma, Italia, 3 Centro Ricerche Neuropsicologia, Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico Fondazione Santa Lucia, I-00179 Roma, Italia

Address correspondence to Alissa D. Fourkas, Institut für Medizinische Psychologie und Verhaltensneurobiologie, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Gartenstrasse 29, D-72074 Tübingen, Deutschland. Email: alissa-dora.fourkas{at}uni-tuebingen.de; fourkasa{at}mail.nih.gov.

Specific physical or mental practice may induce short- and long-term neuroplastic changes in the motor system and cause tools to become part of one's own body representation. Athletes who use tools as part of their practice may be an excellent model for assessing the neural correlates of possible bodily representation changes that are specific to extensive practice. We used single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to measure corticospinal excitability in forearm and hand muscles of expert tennis players and novices while they mentally practiced a tennis forehand, table tennis forehand, and a golf drive. The muscles of expert tennis players showed increased corticospinal facilitation during motor imagery of tennis but not golf or table tennis. Novices, although athletes, were not modulated across sports. Subjective reports indicated that only in the tennis imagery condition did experts differ from novices in the ability to form proprioceptive images and to consider the tool as an extension of the hand. Neurophysiological and subjective data converge to suggest a key role of long-term experience in modulating sensorimotor body representations during mental simulation of sports.

Key Words: athletes • expert-novice differences • mental practice • motor imagery • transcranial magnetic stimulation

4 Current address: Institut für Medizinische Psychologie und Verhaltensneurobiologie, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, D-72074 Tübingen, Deutschland and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA

5 Current address: Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli studi di Bologna "Alma Mater Studiorum," I-40127 Bologna, Italia and Centro di Studi e Ricerche in Neuroscienze Cognitive, I-47023 Cesena, Italia


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