Figure 1.

The figure shows (a) two snapshots taken from the in‐motion video clips used in the Imagery (left) and Mental Imitation (right) condition and (b) the structure of the second‐level full‐factorial ANOVA of the Virtual Walking analysis. As shown in (a), in 50% of the trials, the participants were also required to perform ankle dorsiflexion while they imagined standing or walking along the path. Walk indicates the conditions when the participants imagined or mentally imitated walking. Stand indicates the conditions when the participants imagined or mentally imitated standing on the spot. Mov+ indicates the conditions in which the participants also performed ankle dorsiflexion. Mov− indicates the conditions in which no foot movement was performed. Importantly, the “Walk(Mov+) > Stand(Mov+)” contrasts, reporting the voxel‐by‐voxel difference between the “Walk(Mov+)” and “Stand(Mov+)” experimental conditions, only inform about the visual processes involved in the Virtual Walking task because motor activations are cancelled out in the “Walk(Mov+)” condition by the presence of foot movements in the “Stand(Mov+)” baseline. This rationale holds both for condition when walk is internally imagined (Imagery run) and imagined by imitation (Mental Imitation run). As a result, the contrast “visual&motor > visual” performed in the second‐level analysis isolates the motor components of motor imagery/mental imitation of gait. Differently, a main effect of all contrast images identifies both visual and motor components of the Virtual Walking task. [Color figure can be viewed at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com]