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Surface-based information mapping reveals crossmodal vision-action representations in human parietal and
Nikolaas N Oosterhof1, Alison J Wiggett, Jörn Diedrichsen
1School of Psychology, Bangor University, Bangor, United Kingdom. n.oosterhof@bangor.ac.uk
Journal of Neurophysiology
|June 12, 2010
Summary
Researchers used functional MRI to find brain regions that process both seeing and doing actions. This study reveals crossmodal action regions in the brain, enhancing our understanding of action representation.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Motor Control
Background:
- Evidence suggests a strong link between perceiving and performing actions.
- Visual perception of actions activates the observer's motor system.
- Mirror neurons in macaques inspired theories, but human crossmodal action representation evidence is incomplete.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify human brain regions with crossmodal visual/motor representations of actions.
- To investigate neural coding for action perception and execution.
- To explore how multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) aids understanding of distributed neural representations.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used while participants performed and observed hand actions.
- A data-driven approach with whole-brain information mapping and MVPA was applied.
- Analyses focused on identifying regions where voxelwise activity patterns distinguish between different actions across visual and motor domains.
Main Results:
- Crossmodal action regions were found in the lateral occipitotemporal cortex (bilaterally) and left postcentral gyrus/anterior parietal cortex.
- In object-directed actions, the left postcentral gyrus encoded effector information (fingers vs. whole hand).
- Anterior parietal regions in the left hemisphere encoded action goals (lift vs. punch).
Conclusions:
- The findings provide evidence for common neural coding of visual and motor aspects of actions.
- This study supports the existence of shared neural representations for action perception and execution in humans.
- MVPA is a valuable tool for uncovering the nature of distributed neural representations of actions.
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