Preprint on the links between motor imagery and action planning

Why motor imagery isn’t really motoric: Towards a reconceptualization in terms of effect-based action control.

Overt and imagined action seem inextricably linked. Both follow similar timings, activate shared brain circuits, and motor imagery influences overt action and vice versa. Motor imagery is therefore often assumed to rely on the motor processes governing action execution itself, which allow one to play through or simulate actions offline. Here, we advance a very different conceptualization. In this view, the links between imagery and overt action do not arise because action imagery is intrinsically motoric, but because action planning is intrinsically imaginistic and occurs in terms of the perceptual effects we want to achieve. Viewed like this, the term 'motor imagery' is a misnomer of what is more appropriately portrayed as 'effect imagery'. In this article, we review the evidence for imagery-execution overlaps through this new lens and argue that they indeed emerge because every action we execute is planned, initiated and controlled through an imagery-like process. We highlight findings that this new view can now explain and point out open questions

Bach, P., Frank, C., & Kunde, W. (2021, October 23). Why motor imagery isn’t really motoric: Towards a reconceptualization in terms of effect-based action control. PsyArxiv.