Psychological and Psychophysiological Mechanisms of Motor Skill Training

The present review focuses on psychological and psychophysiological research in the study of motor training and the relationship of this process to the mirror neuron system underlying implicit training, or training by analogy. Our review shows that the most effective strategy for training a motor skill is a combination of physical repetition of the movement and observation of it, with the visual observation of the movement being as related as possible to the actual movement - the same environment, the movement should be congruent, the person performing the action should train the skill rather than perform it professionally. This strategy will be more effective in case of absence of any motor system impairment. In sports practice, the use of implicit training based on analogy (metaphor) for motor skill acquisition will be more effective and appropriate compared to classical implicit methods, especially in cases of motor system disorders, as well as at the older preschool and younger school ages, since the brain structures, critical for explicit training (training by instruction), finally mature by the age of 9-10. The system of mirror neurons, which includes, among others, the ventral premotor area and Broca area, is important in motor training, performing such functions as: recognition of movements, including complex polymodal actions performed by another person; it is the basis of mental representations of movements: motor representations, etc. In addition, it is involved in the recognition of action-related sentences. The mirror neuron system integrates observed actions of other people with the personal motor repertoire. The mirror neuron system underlies anticipation: the more professional are the athletes, the higher is the specialization of their mirror neuron system. The system of mirror neurons is the basis of motor training in childhood. An adult person is characterized by a wide repertoire of movements (motor archive), because during his life he gets mastered many movements and actions that are repeated many times and can be later included in mastering more complex actions. A child does not have such a wide motor repertoire; he has to master many movements from the beginning. The system of mirror neurons makes it possible to "mirror" movements similar to those in the human motor repertoire. As a child grows and develops, an archive of different motor programs and formed motor skills is accumulated. This means that children can gradually repeat, or "mirror", increasingly complex movements. Thus, the system of mirror neurons facilitates the process of purposeful movement formation in children of preschool and primary school age.