Similar Sensorimotor Activations with and without Virtual Limbs During Action Execution and Observation in Neurorehabilitation Systems
Cristián Modroño, Sergi Bermúdez-Badia, M S Cameirão, F Marcano-Serrano, F Pereira, T Paulino, E Hernández-Martín, B R García-Ramos, R Villarroel, J Plata-Bello, J L González-Mora · 2026
Read Similar Sensorimotor Activations with and without Virtual Limbs During Action Execution and Observation in Neurorehabilitation Systems by Cristián Modroño, Sergi Bermúdez-Badia, M S Cameirão, F Marcano-Serrano, F Pereira, T Paulino, E Hernández-Martín, B R García-Ramos, R Villarroel, J Plata-Bello, J L González-Mora (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13216155.txt.
Description
Cristián Modroño and co-authors present a 2026 brain imaging study asking whether virtual rehabilitation tasks need a realistic virtual hand. Simpler moving dots might engage the same brain networks, which would free designers to build more flexible exercises.
Twenty-four healthy volunteers performed a cancellation task inside the scanner under four conditions, acting or watching with either a virtual hand or a plain dot. Brain activation across frontoparietal and sensorimotor regions looked much the same for hand and dot versions, in both acting and watching runs, with no significant corrected differences in direct comparisons. The authors conclude that, under these conditions, a virtual limb adds little measurable brain engagement.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Cristián Modroño, Sergi Bermúdez-Badia, M S Cameirão, F Marcano-Serrano, F Pereira, T Paulino, E Hernández-Martín, B R García-Ramos, R Villarroel, J Plata-Bello, J L González-Mora |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 48 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |