Pascual-Leone used TMS to observe changes of the brain between people imagining and people practicing. Remarkably, mental practice alone produced the same physical changes in the motor system as actually playing the piece. Later, the chages in motor signals to the muscles were also same in both groups.
After a brief period of practice, as when we cram for a test, it is relatively easy to improve because we are likely strengthening existing synaptic connections. But we quickly forget what we've crammed because these are easy-come, easy-go neuronal connections and are rapidly reversed. Maintaining improvement and making a skill permanent require the slow steady work that probably forms new connections.
There is another example, Rudiger Gamm. From a positron emission tomography (PET) brain scan, he was found that he was able to recruit five more brain areas for calculating. Experts rely on long-term memory and store key facts and strategies that help them get answers.The faster you can imagine, the faster you can do it. Imagining engages the same motor and sensory programs that are involved in doing it. Everything your "immaterial" mind imagines leaves material traces. Each thought alters the physical state of your brain synapses at a microscopic level.
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