Cognitive neurostimulation relies on using thoughts and imagery to activate the brain, rather than on pharmacology or invasive techniques.
Visual imagery can activate the earliest sensory areas (i.e., V1) if sufficient detail is required in the mental image (see Kosslyn et al. 2000).
Mental imagery is known to activate the motor and sensory cortices, and we hypothesized that, if practiced regularly, it would provide sufficient stimulation of the deafferented neurons and potentially alter the reorganization (Flor et al., 2006).
The imagery group also experienced quicker rebounding of "voluntary activation," the nervous system's ability to activate the muscle.
If older adults could be taught to use imagery in a systematic manner to activate the multisensory experience of healthy states, it seems plausible that they could activate positive biological effects on the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems.
Our results indicate that for severely hemiparetic stroke patients motor imagery may be the preferred way to activate the sensorimotor system without overt behavior.
Motor imagery, passive movement, and movement observation have been suggested to activate the sensorimotor system without overt movement.
Several studies have shown that motor imagery activates the cardiovascular and respiratory system during prolonged exercises [9], [16], [17].
Thus, imagery selectively activates the same areas as are involved in processing perceived objects.
Of these 54 patients, five showed task-specific differential response to the instructions, activating the supplemental motor cortex during tennis imagery, and the parahippocampal gyrus during spatial imagery.
