BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Hum. Neurosci.
Sec. Interacting Minds and Brains
This article is part of the Research TopicWomen in Interacting Minds and Brains IIView all articles
Complex motor imagery in elite female ice hockey players: a cortical arena of imagination revealed by magnetoencephalography
Provisionally accepted
- University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Motor imagery (MI), or "visualization", as practiced by elite athletes to improve performance, provides a model of how covert thought – imagination – can affect subsequent behavior. In this exploratory magnetoencephalography (MEG) study, we sought to identify the brain regions involved in complex MI in a small sample of elite female ice hockey players experienced in visualization. Using an experimental block design, the athletes visualized a specific PETTLEP-guided scripted ice hockey play while monitored with MEG. A frequency domain beamformer was then calculated to contrast the MEG data from the imagery condition with two different control (resting state or mental counting) conditions. Significance was assessed using a cluster-based permutation test. The beamforming results identified a principal hub of neural activity during the imagery condition in a posterior left hemisphere cortical region surrounding the intraparietal sulcus. The same brain region was reliably activated in all eight participants, and may hypothetically demarcate the neural substrate of this type of conscious thought.
Keywords: Cognition, dreaming, MEG, Neuroscience, Sport, visualization
Received: 25 Nov 2025; Accepted: 22 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Potts, Garcia Dominguez, Gold, McAndrews and Wennberg. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Richard Wennberg
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.