Complementary Systems for Understanding Action Intentions

Lange, Floris P. de; Spronk, Marjolein; Willems, Roel M.; Toni, Ivan; Bekkering, Harold

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.02.057

Cited by 307 publications

(263 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Unlike previous work that typically demonstrated an action-goal (to grasp an ear) was prioritized (hierarchal goal representation) at the expense of biological kinematics Hamilton, Brindley, & Frith, 2007;Hayes, Hodges, Scott, Horn, & Williams, 2007;Wohlschlager, Gattis, & Bekkering, 2003), we showed the attainment of an end-state-target 13 goal did not affect the representation of biological kinematics. Our findings build upon the aforementioned effects by indicating top-down and lower-level processes operate within an embedded system that is less hierarchal, and perhaps more complementary (Buxbaum & Kalénine, 2010;de Lange, Spronk, Willems, Toni, & Bekkering, 2008;Heyes, 2011), with the contribution of these processes modulated by the nature of task context. When the biological movement kinematics are novel, as per our atypical biological motion, both processes operate to represent movement kinematics and the end-state-target goal.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

Atypical biological motion kinematics are represented by complementary lower-level and top-down processes during imitation learning

et al. 2016

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Learning a novel movement requires a new set of kinematics to be represented by the sensorimotor system. This is often accomplished through imitation learning where lowerlevel sensorimotor processes are suggested to represent the biological motion kinematics associated with an observed movement. Top-down factors have the potential to influence this process based on the social context, attention and salience, and the goal of the movement. In order to further examine the potential interaction between lower-level and topdown processes in imitation learning, the aim of this study was to systematically control the mediating effects during an imitation of biological motion protocol. In this protocol, we used non-human agent models that displayed different novel atypical biological motion kinematics, as well as a control model that displayed constant velocity. Importantly the three models had the same movement amplitude and movement time. Also, the motion kinematics were displayed in the presence, or absence, of end-state-targets. Kinematic analyses showed atypical biological motion kinematics were imitated, and that this performance was different from the constant velocity control condition. Although the imitation of atypical biological motion kinematics was not modulated by the end-state-targets, movement time was more accurate in the absence, compared to the presence, of an end-state-target. The fact that end-state targets modulated movement time accuracy, but not biological motion kinematics, indicates imitation learning involves top-down attentional, and lower-level sensorimotor systems, which operate as complementary processes mediated by the environmental context.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

Atypical biological motion kinematics are represented by complementary lower-level and top-down processes during imitation learning

et al. 2016

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“…Recent findings indicate that the action observation system is sensitive to the context an action occurs in and may code the meaning or goal of the action rather than the exact way in which the action is performed (Rijntjes et al, 1999;Bekkering et al, 2000;Gergely et al, 2002;Gazzola et al, 2007;Jonas et al, 2007;Newman-Norlund et al, 2007;de Lange et al, 2008). We postulate that in the observation of actions to which it is not easy to ascribe a clear meaning or goal (as in the present study), the cortical motor system does simulate the specific basic motor properties of the observed action.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 50%

Hand preference influences neural correlates of action observation

Willems

Hagoort

2009

Brain Research

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It has been argued that we map observed actions onto our own motor system. Here we added to this issue by investigating whether hand preference influences the neural correlates of action observation of simple, essentially meaningless hand actions. Such an influence would argue for an intricate neural coupling between action production and action observation, which goes beyond effects of motor repertoire or explicit motor training, as has been suggested before. Indeed, parts of the human motor system exhibited a close coupling between action production and action observation. Ventral premotor and inferior and superior parietal cortices showed differential activation for left-and right-handers that was similar during action production as well as during action observation. This suggests that mapping observed actions onto the observer's own motor system is a core feature of action observation -at least for actions that do not have a clear goal or meaning. Basic differences in the way we act upon the world are not only reflected in neural correlates of action production, but can also influence the brain basis of action observation. IntroductionMost individuals have a strong preference to use either the left or the right hand as dominant hand when performing common activities. This distinguishing feature among individuals is at least partially genetically determined, settles early in development and is observed across cultures (see e.g. Annett, 2002;McManus, 2002). Hand preference has been found to differentially influence the cortical motor production system of left-and right-handers (e.g. Kim et al., 1993;Kloppel et al., 2007). Here we investigated whether analogously, hand preference influences neural correlates of action observation.Research shows that action production and action observation are closely linked at the neural level, most notably in the form of mirror neurons in monkey area F5 in ventral premotor cortex and area PF in inferior parietal cortex (see Rizzolatti et al., 2001; Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004 for review). Also in humans it was shown that the ventral part of the premotor cortex and the inferior part of the parietal cortex become active during action observation (for review see Rizzolatti et al., 2001;Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004;Binkofski and Buccino, 2006;Iacoboni and Dapretto, 2006).Compelling evidence for a close link between action production and action observation would be if differences between individuals in terms of motor production lead to different neural correlates during action observation. That is, neural correlates of action observation may be modulated by the motor production 'specifics' of the observer. There is some recent evidence from comparing motor experts to B R A I N R E S E A R C H 1 2 6 9 ( 2 0 0 9 ) 9 0 -1 0 4 ⁎ Corresponding author.

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“…They showed that, although the parieto-frontal mirror mechanism is active in all conditions in which the motor task has to be directly understood, when volunteers were required to judge the reasons behind the observed actions, there was an activation of a sector of the anterior cingulate cortex and of other areas of the so-called 'mentalizing network' 92 . Activation of the same network was also shown in a study that investigated unusual actions performed in implausible versus plausible contexts 93 , as well as in a study on the neural basis of reason inference in non-stereotypical actions 94 .…”

Section: Motor Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%