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Category: Project

Description: The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of Motor Imagery (MI) training on language comprehension. In line with literature suggesting an intimate relationship between the language and the motor system we propose that a MI-training could facilitate language comprehension and more specifically lexico-semantic access. In two experiments, participants were either assigned to a kinesthetic motor-imagery training (KMI), in which they imagined making upper-limb movements, or to a static visual imagery training (SVI), in which they imagined pictures of landscapes. Then they performed two different auditory language comprehension tasks (semantic categorization task and a sentence-picture matching task). Experiment 1, showed that KMI induced facilitation (shorter reaction time) for the two language comprehension tasks compared to the SVI group. This experiment suggested that a motor activation can facilitate semantic access. Experiment 2, aimed at replicating this result using a pre– and post-training language assessment and a longer training period (four sessions training spread over four days). Results also showed that the KMI group improved more than the SVI group only in the semantic decision task. Overall, our observations highlight that motor imagery can contribute to the improvement of lexical-semantic processing and could open new avenues on rehabilitation methods for language deficits.