Inter-Task Transfer of Prism Adaptation through Motor Imagery

Prism adaptation (PA) is a useful method to investigate short-term sensorimotor plasticity. Following active exposure to prisms, individuals show consistent after-effects, probing that they have adapted to the perturbation. Whether after-effects are transferable to another task or remain specific to the task performed under exposure, represents a crucial interest to understand the adaptive processes at work. Motor imagery (MI, i.e., the mental representation of an action without any concomitant execution) offers an original opportunity to investigate the role of cognitive aspects of motor command preparation disregarding actual sensory and motor information related to its execution. The aim of the study was to test whether prism adaptation through MI led to transferable after-effects. Forty-four healthy volunteers were exposed to a rightward prismatic deviation while performing actual (Active group) versus imagined (MI group) pointing movements, or while being inactive (inactive group). Upon prisms removal, in the MI group, only participants with the highest MI abilities (MI+ group) showed consistent after-effects on pointing and, crucially, a significant transfer to throwing. This was not observed in participants with lower MI abilities and in the inactive group. However, a direct comparison of pointing after-effects and transfer to throwing between MI+ and the control inactive group did not show any significant difference. Although this interpretation requires caution, these findings suggest that exposure to intersensory conflict might be responsible for sensory realignment during prism adaptation which could be transferred to another task. This study paves the way for further investigations into MI's potential to develop robust sensorimotor adaptation.