Mental imagery and intraoral local anesthesia. This study was designed to determine whether mental imagery ability improves through mental practice, and whether mental imagery practice can help students learn to administer intraoral local anesthetics. Pre- and post-test measures of imagery ability and first and final measures of performance in local anesthetic administration were examined in dental hygiene students. Results indicated a significant increase in mean scores for the Gordon Test of Imagery Control from pre- to post-test within the experimental group. Although there was a trend toward higher mean performance scores for the experimental subjects, they performed significantly better than the controls only on the posterior superior alveolar nerve block. There were, however, significant correlations between imagery ability and clinical performance for the combined groups. Mental imagery ability improved with practice and appeared to assist in learning the technique of intraoral local anesthetic administration. Published in Journal of dental education (1984)

the following factors affected the effectiveness of mental imagery on muscular activity: low or high EMG activity during mental imagery modulated by imagery perspectives, the intensity of mental effort, weight to be lifted, and activity of the imagined movement. Mental imagery was classified as consisting of internal and external imagery perspectives and their effect on strength performance. Nevertheless, the empirical research findings (60%) indicated that internal imagery was more beneficial for closed skills than external imagery, whereas performance involving open skills might benefit most from external imagery ( Table 3 ). Table 3. Results stratified according to imagery perspectives, training duration and type of skills. Numbers of studies Sum code Imagery perspectives Internal imagery 12 + External imagery 2 ? Training duration Short duration 9 + Long duration 2 ? Open skills Internal imagery 5 ? External imagery 5 + Closed skills Internal imagery 5 + External imagery 5 ? Open in a new tab Concerning EMG activity, the results obtained in the present review showed that internal imagery produces higher EMG activity than external imagery does. The high mental effort resulted in more muscular activity compared to that induced by low mental effort. Furthermore, mental imagery with muscular activity was higher in active than passive muscles, and imagining “lifting a heavy object” resulted in higher EMG activity than imagining “lifting a lighter object”. Finally, self-efficacy, motivation, and imagery ability were the mediator variables in the mental imagery-strength performance relationship ( Table 4 ). Table 4. Results from mediation variables. Number of studies Sum code Imagery ability 11 + Self-efficacy/ self-confidence 2 + Motivation 1 + Open in a new tab Discussion Mental imagery-muscle strength relationship in healthy and patient participants Mental imagery has been reported to induce a performance improvement in skilled movements in a comparable way to phys