Facial skin blood flow response during motor imagery of sports performance

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K12991
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Sports science
• Research Institution: Tokyo Institute of Technology
• Principal Investigator: HAYASHI Naoyuki 東京工業大学, リベラルアーツ研究教育院, 教授 (80273720)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 正木 宏明 早稲田大学, スポーツ科学学術院, 教授 (80277798)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 顔面皮膚血流 / イメージトレーニング / 運動イメージ

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We previously reported unique skin blood flow (SkBF) responses in the face to emotions related to taste. Then we supposed that poor and good motor imaginary reflect to facial SkBF response. We examined whether motor imaginary of volleyball serves are related to facial SkBF responses to underhand- and floater- serve, comparing 1st-person with 3rd-person perspective of the imaginary. The subjective evaluation for the control of motor imagery is high, SkBF in the eyelid showed greater. The results suggests that high controllability of motor imagery related to an increase the SkBF responses in the eyelid. To extract skillful and disadvantaged scenes in sports performance based on facial SkBF responses, we need to examine whether similar SkBF responses can be obtained in other sports events, and the increase response in the nose become conspicuous according to the skill of sports, in future studies.

Free Research Field

運動生理学