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The study of imagery has been a central pillar in the Sports Psychology field, since athletes have reported the use of imagery techniques in order to mentally practice body movements and, therefore, improve the actual physical performance. Similarly, music plays a quintessential role in many sports as its influence on athletes’ motivation, concentration, confidence and anxiety levels before and during the sporting practice has been widely reported and studied. The application of imagery and music combined has been reported to yield improvement in sporting performance. As a possible explanation, certain types of music have been considered as an element that decreases arousal levels in subjects, promoting a more effective use of imagery prior to performance. However, it has also been reported that subjects had better performance at tasks that assessed mental imagery processes after arousal increase after subjects’ exposure to arousing music. Thus, this study has investigated whether two distinct musical stimuli (simple and complex music) affected arousal levels in participants, and consequently the performance in a mental imagery of body parts (henceforth: motor imagery) cognitive task, namely mental-rotation of bodily-related pictures. 30 Sports Science students completed this mental rotation of body pictures task after exposure to three different stimuli (silence, complex music and simple music). Although results showed arousal levels decrease after subjects were exposed to both complex music and silence, this decrease did not yield any effect on performance, casting doubt on the hypothesis that arousal decrease facilitates motor imagery processes.

The pursuit of excellence in sporting practices sheds light on the use of techniques beyond those that pertain to the physical training. Moreover, mental training is now considered a key aspect in an athlete’s training routine, and as a consequence, mental imagery techniques have become popular among athletes and coaches since the mental practice of body movements reportedly improves the actual physical performance. One plausible explanation for this is the overlap between imagery and motor execution in terms of neural substrates activated in the pre-motor and motor cortical areas. Furthermore, music has been associated with enhancement in spatial-temporal reasoning, reflecting on performance in tasks that assess mental imagery processes, and this phenomenon is justified by the hypothesis of a direct cortical activation of areas responsible for spatial-temporal reasoning. It has also been reported that the motor system is actively involved in music processing, in which different patterns of neural activation in the pre-motor and motor cortical areas are elicited according to the rhythmic complexity of a stimulus, strengthening the hypothesis that musical stimuli may be responsible for improvement in motor imagery processes. To investigate this hypothesis, 30 Sports Science students completed a motor imagery-related cognitive task – a mental rotation of bodily-related pictures task - after exposure to three different stimuli (silence, music with complex rhythm and music with simple rhythm). Results showed no differences either in mental rotation performance, casting doubt on the hypothesis of improvement in imagery processes after music listening.