Association Between EEG Activity and Motor Imagery Ability in Single-Joint Movements: A Pilot Study

Background/Objectives: This exploratory pilot study examined whether motor imagery ability is associated with electroencephalography (EEG) oscillatory activity during single-joint motor imagery. Methods: Eleven healthy young adults performed motor execution, kinesthetic motor imagery (KMI), and visual motor imagery (VMI) of right wrist dorsiflexion. Motor imagery ability was assessed using the Kinesthetic and Visual Imagery Questionnaire (KVIQ). Time-frequency EEG data were analyzed using cluster-based permutation tests. Based on the study hypotheses, kinesthetic KVIQ scores were examined in relation to task-onset-locked KMI activity, and visual KVIQ scores were examined in relation to task-offset-locked VMI activity. A Bonferroni-adjusted threshold of p < 0.025 was applied across the two analyses. Results: No condition-level EEG differences were observed among motor execution, KMI, and VMI. Kinesthetic KVIQ scores were negatively associated with 6.5-13 Hz activity at O1 during KMI (p = 0.024), whereas visual KVIQ scores were positively associated with post-task 10-16.5 Hz activity at F7 during VMI (p = 0.023). Both met the Bonferroni-adjusted significance threshold. The corresponding descriptive Pearson correlations were r = -0.869 and r = 0.937. Conclusions: These exploratory findings should not be interpreted as confirmatory evidence of stable brain-behavior associations; the reported correlations are descriptive summaries based on clusters selected from the same dataset. Replication in a larger, independent study with prespecified analyses and objective measures of imagery performance is needed.