davclark's mirror-system [8 articles]

Abstract

The discovery of the mirror neuron system (MNS) has led researchers to speculate that this system evolved from an embodied visual recognition apparatus in monkey to a system critical for social skills in humans. It is accepted that the MNS is specialized for processing animate stimuli, although the degree to which social interaction modulates the firing of mirror neurons has not been investigated. In the current study, EEG mu wave suppression was used as an index of MNS activity. Data were ...

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Psychologically, females are usually thought to be superior in interpersonal sensitivity than males. The human mirror-neuron system is considered to provide the basic mechanism for social cognition. However, whether the human mirror-neuron system exhibits gender differences is not yet clear. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We measured the electroencephalographic mu rhythm, as a reliable indicator of the human mirror-neuron system activity, when female (N = 20) and male (N = 20) participants watched either hand actions or a moving dot. The display of ...

Abstract

Summary The human brain contains specialized circuits for observing and understanding actions [1] , [2] and [3] . Previous studies have not distinguished whether this “mirror system” uses specialized motor representations or general processes of visual inference and knowledge to understand observed actions [4] . We report the first neuroimaging study to distinguish between these alternatives. Purely motoric influences on perception have been shown behaviorally [5] , but their neural bases are unknown. We used fMRI to reveal the neural ...

Abstract

We compared brain activation involved in the observation of isolated right hand movements (e.g. twisting a lid), body-referred movements (e.g. brushing teeth) and expressive gestures (e.g. threatening) in 20 healthy subjects by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Perception-related areas in the occipital and inferior temporal lobe but also the mirror neuron system in the lateral frontal (ventral premotor cortex and BA 44) and superior parietal lobe were active during all three conditions. Observation of body-referred compared to common hand actions ...

Abstract

When we observe someone performing an action, do our brains simulate making that action? Acquired motor skills offer a unique way to test this question, since people differ widely in the actions they have learned to perform. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study differences in brain activity between watching an action that one has learned to do and an action that one has not, in order to assess whether the brain processes of action observation are modulated by the ...

Abstract

Five experiments assessed whether priming a hand shape facilitated judgments about the sensibility of actions performed with objects. Primes specified the hand shape's size (full hand or part) and whether operative fingers were flexed or extended. These dimensions define four prototypical shapes: pinch (part, flexed), poke (part, extended), clench (full, flexed), and palm (full, extended). Primes were verbal in Experiments 1-3 and "iconic" in Experiments 4-5. In Experiments 1-4, subjects were initially trained to enact the shape, given a prime. They ...

Abstract

When a child reaches toward a cookie, the watching parent knows immediately what the child wants. The neural basis of this ability to interpret other people's actions in terms of their goals has been the subject of much speculation. Research with infants has shown that 6 month olds respond when they see an adult reach to a novel goal but habituate when an adult reaches to the same goal repeatedly. We used a similar approach in an event-related functional magnetic resonance ...

Abstract

Research on action simulation identifies brain areas that are active while imagining or performing simple overlearned actions. Are areas engaged during imagined movement sensitive to the amount of actual physical practice? In the present study, participants were expert dancers who learned and rehearsed novel, complex whole-body dance sequences 5 h a week across 5 weeks. Brain activity was recorded weekly by fMRI as dancers observed and imagined performing different movement sequences. Half these sequences were rehearsed and half were unpracticed control ...