Action observation and motor imagery: From neurophysiology to clinical practice | Assoc. Prof. Laura Avanzino

[Melissa McConaghy]

Thank you for your very interesting presentation Laura.

Please post any questions or comments you might have for the presenter or INSIGHT team here.

[Gertrud Pijnenburg]

Thank you very much for this presentation. I’m a Physiotherapist and I work in a private clinic wit PwPD.

Important things I learned: 1. The sensimotor system still works; 2. It takes time to learn and learning should be done supervised. Just an app on the telephone of PwPD is not enough.

[Cathy Zupan]

What I could understand when Laura spoke. She was hard to

understand. Loved the accent but hard to understand. The graphs

where very helpful. I took a lot of notes.

Thank you

[Kerry Bacon]

Thank you Laura. Your talk lifted my spirits. Hearing that if we keep fighting this disease through exercise we don’t just have to expect gloom and doom in the future. Also, your Italian(?) accent put a joyous lilt to the lecture. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you, thank you.

Kerry

[Tiana Della-Putta]

Thank you Laura for a very interesting presentation. I am not surprised that MI and AO assist with motor learning ( and relearning). I am a person living with PD and during your talk I realised that I have been using both these techniques on my own, although I had not formally recognised them as MI and AO.

1) Mental Imagery: when unable to do a task e.g. place items in a shopping bag, brush teeth, use scissors: I stop and mentally imagine what I want to do and then retry. I can then usually execute the task, maybe not well but certainly better.

2) Action Observation: the inability to do a previously automatic task/movement is a common experience in PD. For me, suddenly finding myself unable to do things I have done without thinking
for most of my life was a shock, especially as the affected side is my dominant one. For example: finding I am unable to use cutlery with my left hand, make a ball shape out of clay, tap my left foot, scrunch a scarf, use scissors, turn over in bed. Inspired by a video in the PD Warrior 10 week challenge on relearning how to get into and out of bed, I have since learned to observe either how my other hand/foot did the task, break down the movements or to watch others slowly do the movements. In all of the above cases by watching and breaking down the movement into its component parts and regularly practicing them, I was able to relearn how to do them. This was all prior to commencing medication. I have been concerned and frustrated that this knowledge does not seem to be widely known in the PD community. Being able to relearn movements is very encouraging and for me has made a big and positive difference to living with PD.

I am hoping that more neurologists and PD therapists will realise how much people with PD can do using neuroplasticity and techniques such as MI and AO.

Thank you for your work and I look forward to hearing more.

Best wishes,

Tiana

[Gail Wagstaff]

Thank you! I found this post very interesting and helpful!