Cerebral palsy (CP) refers to a group of permanent movement and posture disorders. Motor imagery (MI) therapy is known to provide potential benefits, but data on MI ability in children and adolescents with CP is lacking.
A systematic review was performed to explore MI abilities in children and adolescents with CP compared to typically developed (TD) subjects.
We searched on PubMed, Web of Science (WOS), EBSCO, Google Scholar, and PEDro including observational studies. Methodological quality was assessed with the modified Newcastle–Ottawa Scale and evidence map was created to synthesize the evidence qualitatively and quantitatively.
Seven cross-sectional studies were selected, which included 174 patients with CP and 321 TD subjects. Three studies explored explicit MI, two MI–execution synchrony, and four implicit MI domains. Methodological quality ranged from 6 to 8 stars. Moderate evidence supported the absence of differences in vividness between the groups. As there was only limited evidence, establishing a clear direction for the results was not possible, especially for the capacity to generate MI, mental chronometry features, and MI–execution synchrony domains. Moderate evidence supported a lower efficiency in cases for hand recognition, derived from a lower accuracy rate, while reaction time remained similar between the two groups. Moderate evidence indicated that patients with CP and TD controls showed similar features on whole-body recognition.
Moderate evidence suggests that patients with CP present a reduced ability in hand recognition, which is not observed for whole-body recognition compared to healthy controls. Severe limitations concerning sample size calculations and validity of assessment tools clearly limits establishing a direction of results, especially for explicit MI and MI-Execution synchrony domains. Further research is needed to address these limitations to enhance our comprehension of MI abilities in children, which is crucial for prescribing suitable MI-based therapies in this child population.