Researchers from the Psychology Research Laboratory at San Giuseppe Hospital in Verbania, Italy, performed a meta-analysis of studies evaluating the effectiveness of relaxation training for anxiety.

Researchers from the School of Nursing,Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA investigated the effects of a 10-week mind-body intervention (guided imagery with relaxation) on symptom management for Hispanics suffering from Fibromyalgia, a chronic pain disorder of unknown origin which affects 2% of the population in the United States. Another 16 million Hispanics suffer from generically identified rheumatic diseases that likely include FM. The pilot study used a repeated-measures pretest-posttest design.

Researchers from the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley evaluated how two, 8-week, 90-min/wk training programs in meditation-based stress-management were able to affect stress, rumination, forgiveness, and hope in college undergraduates.

A critical review out of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California, examined the research on guided imagery’s effects on the immune system. The author states that studies suggest that guided imagery can:

1. reduce stress and elevate the immune system;
2. that cell-specific imagery affects corresponding white blood counts (WBCs), neutrophils and/or lymphocytes;
3. that decreases in white blood counts occur in the initial stages of GI and relaxation, due to fluctuations in WBC production or margination;
4. and that changes in WBC count or adherence occur earlier in medical patients.

The study concludes with thoughts about where further investigations should go, including the definition of the ideal white blood count; the effects of long-term practice of guided imagery; and the influence of cell-specific imagery on WBCs.

Citation: Trakhtenberg EC. The effects of guided imagery on the immune system: a critical review. International Journal of Neuroscience. 2008 Jun; 118 (6): pages 839-55.

Imagery Rehearsal Found Critical in Motor Rehab for Stroke, Better than Physical Practice Alone

Researchers from the University of Lyon in Bron Cedex, France tested whether "mental rehearsal" (motor imagery) is equivalent to physical learning in restoring motor function in hemiplegic patients (paralyzed on one side), and examined what would be optimal proportions of real execution vs. rehearsal.

Subjects were asked to grasp an object and insert it into an adapted slot. One group (G0) practiced the task only by physical execution (240 trials); three groups imagined performing the task in different rates of trials (25%, G25; 50%, G50; 75%, G75), and physically executed movements for the remaining trials; a fourth, control group imagined a visual rotation task in 75% of the trials and then performed the same motor task as the other groups.

In Neurological Rehab, Imagining Movement Delivers the Goods

A Dutch literature review concludes that imagining movement creates the same flow of sensory information that leads to the reacquisition of motor skills.

In rehab, active exercising creates the flow of sensory information responsible for the learning or relearning of lost (or newly needed) motor skills. This review article addresses whether active physical exercise is always necessary for creating this sensory flow.

It points to numerous studies indicating that motor imagery can result in the same plastic changes in the motor system that actual physical practice provides. Motor imagery is the mental execution of a movement without any overt, corresponding movement or without any peripheral (muscle) activation.