Immediate Effect of Incremental Metronome in Auditory Guided Motor Imagery to Improve Timed up and Go Performance in Elderly

Aim To evaluate the immediate effect of incremental metronome-guided motor imagery (MI) on Timed Up and Go (TUG) performance in older adults, with constant metronome-guided MI and MI without metronome as comparative conditions.Methods A three-arm parallel-group randomized study included 48 older adults (60–75 years) allocated to MI without metronome, constant metronome-guided MI, or incremental metronome-guided MI. Participants performed 10 MI trials with pre- and post-intervention TUG assessments.Results TUG performance improved across all groups. Mixed-design ANOVA showed a significant effect of time and a significant Group × Time interaction (p < 0.001). The incremental metronome group improved more than the no-metronome group (p < 0.05), while no statistically significant difference was observed compared to the constant metronome group.Conclusion Motor imagery improved TUG performance in all groups. Incremental metronome-guided MI showed significantly greater improvement than no metronome, while greater improvement than constant metronome did not reach statistical significance.