Dataset Information

Decoding social intentions in human prehensile actions: Insights from a combined kinematics-fMRI study.

ABSTRACT: Consistent evidence suggests that the way we reach and grasp an object is modulated not only by object properties (e.g., size, shape, texture, fragility and weight), but also by the types of intention driving the action, among which the intention to interact with another agent (i.e., social intention). Action observation studies ascribe the neural substrate of this 'intentional' component to the putative mirror neuron (pMNS) and the mentalizing (MS) systems. How social intentions are translated into executed actions, however, has yet to be addressed. We conducted a kinematic and a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study considering a reach-to-grasp movement performed towards the same object positioned at the same location but with different intentions: passing it to another person (social condition) or putting it on a concave base (individual condition). Kinematics showed that individual and social intentions are characterized by different profiles, with a slower movement at the level of both the reaching (i.e., arm movement) and the grasping (i.e., hand aperture) components. fMRI results showed that: (i) distinct voxel pattern activity for the social and the individual condition are present within the pMNS and the MS during action execution; (ii) decoding accuracies of regions belonging to the pMNS and the MS are correlated, suggesting that these two systems could interact for the generation of appropriate motor commands. Results are discussed in terms of motor simulation and inferential processes as part of a hierarchical generative model for action intention understanding and generation of appropriate motor commands.

SUBMITTER: Di Bono MG

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5573299 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Decoding social intentions in human prehensile actions: Insights from a combined kinematics-fMRI study.

Di Bono Maria Grazia MG Begliomini Chiara C Budisavljevic Sanja S Sartori Luisa L Miotto Diego D Motta Raffaella R Castiello Umberto U

PloS one 20170828 8

Consistent evidence suggests that the way we reach and grasp an object is modulated not only by object properties (e.g., size, shape, texture, fragility and weight), but also by the types of intention driving the action, among which the intention to interact with another agent (i.e., social intention). Action observation studies ascribe the neural substrate of this 'intentional' component to the putative mirror neuron (pMNS) and the mentalizing (MS) systems. How social intentions are translated ...[more]

PMID: 28846741

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Project description:Scenes strongly facilitate object recognition, such as when we make out the shape of a distant boat on the water. Yet, although known to interact in perception, neuroimaging research has primarily provided evidence for separate scene- and object-selective cortical pathways. This raises the question of how these pathways interact to support context-based perception. Here we used a novel approach in human fMRI and MEG studies to reveal supra-additive scene-object interactions. Participants (men and women) viewed degraded objects that were hard to recognize when presented in isolation but easy to recognize within their original scene context, in which no other associated objects were present. fMRI decoding showed that the multivariate representation of the objects' category (animate/inanimate) in object-selective cortex was strongly enhanced by the presence of scene context, even though the scenes alone did not evoke category-selective response patterns. This effect in object-selective cortex was correlated with concurrent activity in scene-selective regions. MEG decoding results revealed that scene-based facilitation of object processing peaked at 320 ms after stimulus onset, 100 ms later than peak decoding of intact objects. Together, results suggest that expectations derived from scene information, processed in scene-selective cortex, feed back to shape object representations in visual cortex. These findings characterize, in space and time, functional interactions between scene- and object-processing pathways.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Although scenes and objects are known to contextually interact in visual perception, the study of high-level vision has mostly focused on the dissociation between their selective neural pathways. The current findings are the first to reveal direct facilitation of object recognition and neural representation by scene background, even in the absence of contextually associated objects. Using a multivariate approach to both fMRI and MEG, we characterize the functional neuroanatomy and neural dynamics of such scene-based object facilitation. Finally, the correlation of this effect with scene-selective activity suggests that, although functionally distinct, scene and object processing pathways do interact at a perceptual level to fill in for insufficient visual detail.

Dataset Information

Decoding social intentions in human prehensile actions: Insights from a combined kinematics-fMRI study.

Publications

Decoding social intentions in human prehensile actions: Insights from a combined kinematics-fMRI study.

Similar Datasets

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