Temporal dynamics of action perception: differences on ERP evoked by object-related and non-object-related actions

While neuropsychological dissociations suggest that distinct processes are involved in execution or perception of transitive (object-related) and intransitive (non-object-related) actions, the few neuroimaging studies that directly contrasted the brain activations underlying transitive and intransitive gesture perception failed to find substantial differences between the two action types. However, the distinction could be visible on brain activity timing within the fronto-parietal network. In this study, we used Event-Related Potential (ERP) method to assess the temporal dynamics of object-related and non-object-related action processing. Although both meaningful, only object-related actions involve object motor features. Accordingly, perception of the two action types would show distinct neural correlates. Participants were presented with four movie types (ORA, Object-Related Action, NORA: Non-Object-Related Action and 2 control movies) and were instructed to perform tasks that required explicit or implicit action recognition (specific action recognition or color change detection). Movies were presented as Point-Light Display (PLD) and thus provided only information about gesture kinematics regardless of action type. ERP were computed during movie visual perception and analyzed as a function of movie type and task. The main result revealed a difference between ORA and NORA on the amplitude of the P3a component in the fronto-parietal region. The difference observed around 250 ms after movie onset do not likely origin from variation in low-level visual features or attention resource allocation. Instead, we suggest that it reflects incidental recruitment of object attributes during object-related action perception. The exact nature of these attributes is discussed.