Effects of Motor Imagery on Autonomic Function

A minimum recruitment rate of 10 participants per month will be accepted as feasiable.

A target retention rate of 80% will be accepted as feasiable.

A target minimum adherence rate of 70% of the overall practice sessions will be accepted as feasiable.

A record sheet was prepared for possible adverse events during the tests and intervention. It includes information about seriousness, expectedness, severity, causality, time, duration of the event and clinical action taken. The numbers of adverse events will be reported.

The Edinburgh Handedness Inventory is a measurement scale used to assess the dominance of a person's right or left hand in everyday activities, sometimes referred to as laterality. The 10-item inventory contains a list of instructions to be carried out by the individual being assessed. Items are rated by direct observation of the individual's behavior or by self-report of everyday behavior. Scoring is as follows: "-50" always left, "-25" usually left, "0" no preference, "25" usually right, and "50" always right. Scores on the eight rows are summed to provide a score of -400 to +400. Positive scores indicate right-hand dominance and negative scores indicate left-hand dominance.

The Movement Imagery Questionnaire-Revised assesses visual and kinesthetic movement imagery ability and is comprised of four visual and four kinesthetic items. Each item entails performing a movement, visually or kinesthetically imaging that movement and then rating the ease or difficulty of generating that image on a 7-point scale from 1 = very hard to see/feel to 7 = very easy to see/feel. Higher scores indicate higher visual or kinesthetic movement imagery ability.

The participants will actually execute and imagine a motor task: walking at comfortable speed for a distance of 6 m. The duration of actual and imagined movements will be recorded by means of an electronic stopwatch. During the execution of the actual and imagined movements subjects will hold the electronic stopwatch in their non-dominant hand. They will start the stopwatch when they started to move (actual or imagined movement) and they will stop it when they completed their movement (actual or imagined). Delta time will be calculated with the formula [(actual - imagined) / (actual + imagined / 2)] × 100. Lower scores indicate higher motor imagery ability.

The participants will actually execute and imagine a motor task: writing the following sentence: "Türkiye'nin başkenti Ankara". The duration of actual and imagined movements will be recorded by means of an electronic stopwatch. During the execution of the actual and imagined movements subjects will hold the electronic stopwatch in their non-dominant hand. They will start the stopwatch when they started to move (actual or imagined movement) and they will stop it when they completed their movement (actual or imagined). Delta time will be calculated with the formula [(actual - imagined) / (actual + imagined / 2)] × 100. Lower scores indicate higher motor imagery ability.

A tablet including an application Recognise™ app, NOI) will be placed on a table while the participants sitting in a standard chair. When given the cue to begin, participants will view the image and touch the screen to select the appropriate hand laterality judgement image interpretation. A standard 5-s maximum time limit per image will be set on the app. At the completion of the 40 images the accuracy for right, left, and total will be recorded along with average time per image to the nearest hundredth of a second.

Quark cardiopulmonary exercise testing system will be used to assess Resting Metabolic Rate Measurements. Oxygen consumption is an indicator of aerobic capacity. Higher scores indicate higher aerobic capacity.

Quark cardiopulmonary exercise testing system will be used to assess Resting Metabolic Rate Measurements. The ratio of carbon dioxide output/oxygen uptake is called the respiratory exchange ratio. Under steady state conditions, the respiratory exchange ratio equals the respiratory quotient. The respiratory quotient value is determined by the fuels used for metabolic processes. An respiratory quotient of 1 indicates metabolism primarily of carbohydrates, whereas an respiratory quotient of <1 indicates a mixture of carbohydrates and fat (respiratory quotient about 0.7) or protein (respiratory quotient about 0.8).