Neuromagnetic Response to Body Motion and Brain Connectivity

Abstract

Visual detection of body motion is of immense importance for daily-life activities and social nonverbal interaction. Although neurobiological mechanisms underlying visual processing of human locomotion are being explored extensively by brain imaging, the role of structural brain connectivity is not well understood. Here we investigate cortical evoked neuromagnetic response to point-light body motion in healthy adolescents and in patients with early periventricular lesions, periventricular leukomalacia (PVL), that disrupt brain connectivity. In a simultaneous masking paradigm, participants detected the presence of a point-light walker embedded in a few sets of spatially scrambled dots on the joints of a walker. The visual sensitivity to camouflaged human locomotion was lower in PVL patients. In accord with behavioral data, root-mean-square (RMS) amplitude of neuromagnetic trace in response to human locomotion was lower in PVL patients at latencies of 180-244 msec over the right temporal cortex. In this time window, the visual sensitivity to body motion in controls, but not in PVL patients, was inversely linked to the right temporal activation. At later latencies of 276-340 msec, we found reduction in RMS amplitude in PVL patients for body motion stimuli over the right frontal cortex. The findings indicate that disturbances in brain connectivity with the right temporal cortex, a key node of the social brain, and with the right frontal cortex lead to disintegration of the neural network engaged in visual processing of body motion. We suspect that reduced cortical response to body motion over the right temporal and frontal cortices might underlie deficits in visual social cognition.

What differs in visual recognition of handwritten vs. printed letters? An fMRI study

“…In addition, covert eye movements could have been associated with handwritten letters given their intrinsic dynamical character [Babcock and Freyd, 1988; Freyd, 1987]. In support of this interpretation, the right frontal cortex has recently been pointed as crucial for the ability to detect biological motion from point‐light displays [Pavlova et al, 2009, see also Ptito et al, 2003]. However, without simultaneous eye‐tracking data the present interpretations remain speculative.…”

Modulation of BOLD Response in Motion-sensitive Lateral Temporal Cortex by Real and Fictive Motion Sentences

“…The visual perception of others’ body movements and actions has been a paradigm case in this field. When we see other individuals’ actions, brain areas in frontal cortex that are involved in planning and executing our own movements are activated (Pavlova, Bidet-Ildei, Sokolov, Braun, & Krageloh-Mann, 2009; Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004; Saygin, Wilson, Hagler, Bates, & Sereno, 2004), and inversely, damage to these areas can cause impairments in the perception of others’ body movements (Saygin, 2007; Pobric & Hamilton, 2006). The hypothesis that the brain may carry out a partial internal simulation of seen body movements is further supported by experiments that manipulated visual and motor experience with the movements perceived (Calvo-Merino, Grezes, Glaser, Passingham, & Haggard, 2006; Casile & Giese, 2006).…”

Differences in Neural Current Sources of Science Gifted and Normal Children in Creative Reasoning

“…Recently, a result of study reporting that the more complication of a task is increased at the time of performing a task, cerebral activation of fronto-parietal network is being more highly represented in a group of high IQ than that of low IQ (Perfetti et al, 2009) result has something in common with a study (Gray et al, 2003) reporting that at the time of performing a task that requires fluid intelligence of high level, functional network connection is highly represented in overall brain activation site. In case of right parietotemporal circuit, this circuit is reported to be involved in visual handling of moving object (Grossman & Blake, 2002;Pavlova et al, 2009). Pavlova and his colleagues (2010) performed a pattern recognition experiment by which basic human sociality is identified through interaction of moving figures (triangle and circle) in a certain space and as a result of this study, they discovered the fact that activation of right parietotemporal circuit has a close relation with human sociality.…”