Increased putamen activity reflects improvement in mental rotation in response to practice

Introduction: Mental rotation is a complex visuospatial process that requires representation and manipulation of mental images (Kosslyn et al., 1998). Mental rotation ability can be enhanced by training (e.g., Walz et al., 2012) but the underlying neural mechanisms of improved performance are unclear. Aims: We investigated the impact of mental rotation training on the performance of mentally rotating hands and the functional anatomy changes underlying improved performance. Method: Twenty-two healthy right-handed volunteers participated in six half hourly training sessions over the course of three days and underw…