As a young scholar captivated by the mind-body connection, Molly Brillinger found herself drawn to an idea both familiar and revolutionary: the notion that we can train the body by exercising the mind.
Today, Brillinger is breaking new ground in the study of motor imagery—how we mentally simulate movement—by exploring how people imagine moving not just alone, but together. Her journey from foundational neuroscience to the dugouts of professional baseball has been powered by curiosity, collaboration and key support from the Tanenbaum Institute for Sport Science (TISS).
Brillinger completed her PhD in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE), where she began to investigate how our brains imagine actions performed in partnership with others. While most research in this area has focused on individual movements—such as picturing oneself reaching for a cup—Brillinger was struck by how much of our daily lives involve coordination.
“In the real world, a lot of our movements involve other people,” she explains. “From handing someone a tool to moving in sync on a sports team, joint actions are everywhere. And yet, when I started this research, there were only a couple of published studies on how we imagine these movements.”
Brillinger’s doctoral work helped pioneer this area, revealing that the social context of imagined movement matters. Her findings showed that simply imagining performing a task with a highly skilled partner could change the way a person imagines their own movements. More than just simulating movement, the brain was also factoring in partnership, expertise, and timing—offering a glimpse into the cognitive complexity of team performance.
“These results suggest that imagining joint actions recruits different cognitive processes than imagining solo ones,” she says. “It’s not just imagining ‘me plus someone else,’ but a qualitatively different experience that draws on perspective-taking, social cognition and shared motor planning.”
That research, supported by a TISS scholarship, didn’t just push the field forward—it helped chart the course of Brillinger’s career.
“The TISS scholarship was incredibly meaningful,” she says. “It gave me the freedom to really focus on developing this niche area of study. It also introduced me to a broader network of researchers working across disciplines in sport science. That network continues to shape how I think about the relevance and application of my work.”
Today, Brillinger is building on that foundation as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Joseph Baker, a leading expert in skill acquisition and performance science. “I’m excited to see how Molly can translate her experimental knowledge and expertise into one of the most challenging and dynamic environments people ever find themselves in: professional sport,” he says.
Together, the pair are collaborating on a new TISS-funded project that brings motor behaviour research into the high-performance world of Major League Baseball.
"Now we're taking these theories out of the lab and into real-world performance settings,” Brillinger says. “We’re working with players on the Texas Rangers to understand how they perceive and use information during batting—a task that happens in fractions of a second and under incredible pressure.”
Though the subject matter has shifted from internal simulation to in-game decision-making, the underlying goal of understanding complex motor behaviour remains the same. And for Brillinger, the chance to work directly with athletes, coaches and sport science professionals is both a challenge and a privilege.
“It’s not every day you get to apply the fundamentals of motor control to elite sport in such a direct way,” she says. “I’m excited about the cross-disciplinary collaboration this work requires. The on-the-ground insights from coaching staff and players offer perspectives we don’t usually access from the lab, and they have the potential to shape not just how we interpret results, but how we design the research in the first place.”
Brillinger sees the project as an opportunity to generate evidence-based strategies that can enhance real-time performance at the highest levels of sport. At the same time, she believes the lessons learned in pro baseball may ripple outward, informing rehabilitation practices, team dynamics and other performance domains.
“TISS has played a central role in allowing me to follow this path,” she says. “The continuity from grad school to postdoc has allowed me to deepen my expertise while expanding into more applied, real-world contexts.”
That throughline, she notes, hasn’t just been about funding—it’s been about mentorship, collaboration, and sustained inquiry.
“TISS has really reinforced the value of the questions I’ve been asking,” she says. “It’s helped me stay grounded in theory while opening doors into applied science.”
For other students interested in applying for similar opportunities, Brillinger’s advice is both practical and philosophical.
“Don’t just think of these applications as funding,” she says. “They’re also a chance to clarify your ideas and communicate why your work matters. Take time to articulate the impact of your research—and ask for feedback along the way.”
Above all, she encourages graduate students to see scholarships like TISS as stepping stones to meaningful research and long-term purpose.
“These programs can change your whole trajectory,” she says. “They did for me.”