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The Representation of Observed Actions at the Subordinate, Basic, and Superordinate Level
Tonghe Zhuang1, Zuzanna Kabulska1, Angelika Lingnau2
1Faculty of Human Sciences, Institute of Psychology, Chair of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany.
Summary
The human brain represents actions at different levels of detail. The lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC) primarily processes actions at the basic level, with flexible access to more specific details.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Psychology
Background:
- Understanding how the brain represents actions at various hierarchical levels is crucial for comprehending how we interpret the world.
- Existing research debates whether parietal, premotor, or lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC) regions are primarily involved in these representations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the neural representations of observed actions across subordinate, basic, and superordinate hierarchical levels.
- To determine which brain regions are involved in processing actions at these different levels of abstraction.
Main Methods:
- An event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was conducted with human participants.
- Multiple regression representational similarity analysis (RSA) was applied to fMRI data within predefined regions of interest and across the whole brain.
Main Results:
- Patterns of activation in the bilateral lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC) best captured representations across all three taxonomic levels, showing the highest similarity with the basic level model.
- Unique information for the basic level of action representation was found in dorsal and ventral LOTC and parietal regions.
- Unique information for the subordinate level was localized to the bilateral occipitotemporal cortex, with no specific cluster identified for the superordinate level.
Conclusions:
- The lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC) plays a key role in representing observed actions, showing a preference for the basic level of abstraction.
- The brain exhibits flexible access to both subordinate and basic levels of action representation within the LOTC.
- These findings contribute to understanding the hierarchical organization of action representation and the neural basis of the basic level advantage in perception.
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