Object visibility alters the relative contribution of ventral visual stream and mirror neuron system to goal anticipation during action observation.

ABSTRACT: We used fMRI to study the effect of hiding the target of a grasping action on the cerebral activity of an observer whose task was to anticipate the size of the object being grasped. Activity in the putative mirror neuron system (pMNS) was higher when the target was concealed from the view of the observer and anticipating the size of the object being grasped requested paying attention to the hand kinematics. In contrast, activity in ventral visual areas outside the pMNS increased when the target was fully visible, and the performance improved in this condition. A repetition suppression analysis demonstrated that in full view, the size of the object being grasped by the actor was encoded in the ventral visual stream. Dynamic causal modeling showed that monitoring a grasping action increased

SUBMITTER: Thioux M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4968654 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature