Nature documentaries vs. quiet rest: no evidence for an impact on event-related desynchronization during motor imagery and neurofeedback.

Motor imagery (MI) in combination with neurofeedback (NF) has emerged as a promising approach in motor neurorehabilitation, facilitating brain activity modulation and promoting motor learning. Although MI-NF has been demonstrated to enhance motor performance and cortical plasticity, its efficacy varies considerably across individuals. Various context factors have been identified as influencing neurophysiological outcomes in motor execution and MI, however, their specific impact on event-related desynchronization (ERD), a key neurophysiological marker in NF, remains insufficiently understood. Previous research suggested that declarative interference following MI-NF may serve as a context factor hindering the progression of ERD. Yet, no significant changes in ERD within the mu and beta (8-30 Hz) frequency bands were observed across blocks in either a declarative interference or a control condition. This raises the question of whether the absence of ERD modulation could be attributed to the break task that was common to both declarative interference and control condition: watching nature documentaries immediately after MI blocks. To investigate this, we conducted a follow-up study replicating the original methodology while collecting new data. We compared NF-MI-ERD between groups with and without nature documentaries as a post-MI condition. Participants completed three sessions of kinesthetic MI-NF training involving a finger-tapping task over two consecutive days, with quiet rest as the post-MI condition (group