The effect of combining action observation in virtual reality with kinesthetic motor imagery on cortical activity

Kishor Lakshminarayanan; Rakshit Shah; Sohail R Daulat; Viashen Moodley; Yifei Yao; Deepa Madathil

doi:10.3389/fnins.2023.1201865

The effect of combining action observation in virtual reality with kinesthetic motor imagery on cortical activity

Front Neurosci. 2023 Jun 13:17:1201865. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1201865. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Kishor Lakshminarayanan¹, Rakshit Shah², Sohail R Daulat³, Viashen Moodley⁴, Yifei Yao⁵, Deepa Madathil⁶

Affiliations

¹ Neuro-Rehabilitation Lab, School of Electronics Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India.
² Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, United States.
³ Department of Physiology, University of Arizona College of Medicine - Tucson, Tucson, AZ, United States.
⁴ Arizona Center for Hand to Shoulder Surgery, Phoenix, AZ, United States.
⁵ Soft Tissue Biomechanics Laboratory, School of Biomedical Engineering, Med-X Research Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
⁶ Jindal Institute of Behavioural Sciences, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India.

Abstract

Introduction: In the past, various techniques have been used to improve motor imagery (MI), such as immersive virtual-reality (VR) and kinesthetic rehearsal. While electroencephalography (EEG) has been used to study the differences in brain activity between VR-based action observation and kinesthetic motor imagery (KMI), there has been no investigation into their combined effect. Prior research has demonstrated that VR-based action observation can enhance MI by providing both visual information and embodiment, which is the perception of oneself as part of the observed entity. Additionally, KMI has been found to produce similar brain activity to physically performing a task. Therefore, we hypothesized that utilizing VR to offer an immersive visual scenario for action observation while participants performed kinesthetic motor imagery would significantly improve cortical activity related to MI.

Methods: In this study, 15 participants (9 male, 6 female) performed kinesthetic motor imagery of three hand tasks (drinking, wrist flexion-extension, and grabbing) both with and without VR-based action observation.

Results: Our results indicate that combining VR-based action observation with KMI enhances brain rhythmic patterns and provides better task differentiation compared to KMI without action observation.

Discussion: These findings suggest that using VR-based action observation alongside kinesthetic motor imagery can improve motor imagery performance.

Keywords: brain computer interface; electroencephalography; event-related desynchronization; kinesthetic motor imagery; machine learning; virtual reality.