Re-imagining motor imagery: Building bridges between cognitive neuroscience and sportpsychology

One of the most remarkable capacities of the mind is its ability to simulate sensations,Q1actions, and other types of experience. A mental simulation process that has attractedrecent attention fromcognitive neuroscientists and sport psychologists is motor imageryor the mental rehearsal of actions without engaging in the actual physical movementsinvolved. Research on motor imagery is important in psychology because it provides anempirical window on consciousness and movement planning, rectifies a relative neglectof non-visual types of mental imagery, and has practical implications for skill learningand skilled performance in special populations (e.g., athletes, surgeons). Unfortunately,contemporary research on motor imagery is hampered by a variety of semantic,conceptual, and methodological issues that prevent cross-fertilization of ideas betweencognitive neuroscience and sport psychology. In this paper, we review these issues,suggest how they can be resolved, and sketch some potentially fruitful new directionsfor inter-disciplinary research in motor imagery.