Regional gray matter volume is associated with motor imagery performance in children with and without developmental coordination disorder

To date, the neurobiological principles that underlie poor motor imagery (MI) performance in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) remain poorly understood. To provide new insights into the neuro-structural correlates of MI performance in DCD, this study examined the association between the volume of gray matter regions and MI performance in a sample of 65 children (33 females, 24 children with DCD) aged 6 to 14 yr (mean age = 10.07, SD = 2.64). Implicit MI performance was assessed using a hand laterality judgment task. Regional volumes of frontal-motor, parietal, and cerebellar regions were derived from T1-weighted neuroimaging data. Relative to typically developing children, children with DCD showed less efficient MI performance on the hand laterality judgment task and had smaller cortical volumes in frontal and cerebellar regions. Partial correlations demonstrated that smaller gray matter volumes in frontal and parietal regions were associated with less efficient MI performance in children with and without DCD. These findings provide novel insight into the neurobiological basis of MI performance in children with and without DCD and highlight the possible contribution of gray matter morphological properties to compromised internal models in children with DCD.