Anticipating action effects recruits audiovisual movement representations in the ventral premotor cortex

When table tennis players anticipate the course of the ball while preparing their motor responses, they not only observe their opponents striking the ball but also listen to events such as the sound of racket-ball contact. Because visual stimuli can be detected more easily when accompanied by a sound, we assumed that complementary sensory audiovisual information would influence the anticipation of biological motion, especially when the racket-ball contact is not presented visually, but has to be inferred from continuous movement kinematics and an abrupt sound. Twenty-six observers were examined with fMRI while watching point-light displays (PLDs) of an opposing table tennis player. Their task was to anticipate the resultant ball flight. The sound was presented complementary to the veracious event or at a deviant time point in its kinematics. Results showed that participants performed best in the complementary condition. Using a region-of-interest approach, fMRI data showed that complementary audiovisual stimulation elicited higher activation in the left temporo-occipital middle temporal gyrus (MTGto), the left primary motor cortex, and the right anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS). Both hemispheres also revealed higher activation in the ventral premotor cortex (vPMC) and the pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus (BA 44). Ranking the behavioral effect of complementary versus conflicting audiovisual information over participants revealed an association between the complementary information and higher activation in the right vPMC. We conclude that the recruitment of movement representations in the auditory and visual modalities in the vPMC can be influenced by task-relevant cross-modal audiovisual interaction.