Understanding and imitating unfamiliar actions: distinct underlying mechanisms.

The human "mirror neuron system" has been proposed to be the neural substrate that underlies understanding and, possibly, imitating actions. However, since the brain activity with mirror properties seems insufficient to provide a good description for imitation of actions outside one's...

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Autores principales:	Joana C Carmo, Raffaella I Rumiati, Antonino Vallesi
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2012
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/8a0695c67312454d8011a753cc729bc7
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:8a0695c67312454d8011a753cc729bc72021-11-18T08:12:33ZUnderstanding and imitating unfamiliar actions: distinct underlying mechanisms.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0046939https://doaj.org/article/8a0695c67312454d8011a753cc729bc72012-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/23071668/pdf/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203The human "mirror neuron system" has been proposed to be the neural substrate that underlies understanding and, possibly, imitating actions. However, since the brain activity with mirror properties seems insufficient to provide a good description for imitation of actions outside one's own repertoire, the existence of supplementary processes has been proposed. Moreover, it is unclear whether action observation requires the same neural mechanisms as the explicit access to their meaning. The aim of this study was two-fold as we investigated whether action observation requires different processes depending on 1) whether the ultimate goal is to imitate or understand the presented actions and 2) whether the to-be-imitated actions are familiar or unfamiliar to the subject. Participants were presented with both meaningful familiar actions and meaningless unfamiliar actions that they had to either imitate or discriminate later. Event-related Potentials were used as differences in brain activity could have been masked by the use of other techniques with lower temporal resolution. In the imitation task, a sustained left frontal negativity was more pronounced for meaningless actions than for meaningful ones, starting from an early time-window. Conversely, observing unfamiliar versus familiar actions with the intention of discriminating them led to marked differences over right centro-posterior scalp regions, in both middle and latest time-windows. These findings suggest that action imitation and action understanding may be sustained by dissociable mechanisms: while imitation of unfamiliar actions activates left frontal processes, that are likely to be related to learning mechanisms, action understanding involves dedicated operations which probably require right posterior regions, consistent with their involvement in social interactions.Joana C CarmoRaffaella I RumiatiAntonino VallesiPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 7, Iss 10, p e46939 (2012)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Joana C Carmo Raffaella I Rumiati Antonino Vallesi Understanding and imitating unfamiliar actions: distinct underlying mechanisms.
description	The human "mirror neuron system" has been proposed to be the neural substrate that underlies understanding and, possibly, imitating actions. However, since the brain activity with mirror properties seems insufficient to provide a good description for imitation of actions outside one's own repertoire, the existence of supplementary processes has been proposed. Moreover, it is unclear whether action observation requires the same neural mechanisms as the explicit access to their meaning. The aim of this study was two-fold as we investigated whether action observation requires different processes depending on 1) whether the ultimate goal is to imitate or understand the presented actions and 2) whether the to-be-imitated actions are familiar or unfamiliar to the subject. Participants were presented with both meaningful familiar actions and meaningless unfamiliar actions that they had to either imitate or discriminate later. Event-related Potentials were used as differences in brain activity could have been masked by the use of other techniques with lower temporal resolution. In the imitation task, a sustained left frontal negativity was more pronounced for meaningless actions than for meaningful ones, starting from an early time-window. Conversely, observing unfamiliar versus familiar actions with the intention of discriminating them led to marked differences over right centro-posterior scalp regions, in both middle and latest time-windows. These findings suggest that action imitation and action understanding may be sustained by dissociable mechanisms: while imitation of unfamiliar actions activates left frontal processes, that are likely to be related to learning mechanisms, action understanding involves dedicated operations which probably require right posterior regions, consistent with their involvement in social interactions.
format	article
author	Joana C Carmo Raffaella I Rumiati Antonino Vallesi
author_facet	Joana C Carmo Raffaella I Rumiati Antonino Vallesi
author_sort	Joana C Carmo
title	Understanding and imitating unfamiliar actions: distinct underlying mechanisms.
title_short	Understanding and imitating unfamiliar actions: distinct underlying mechanisms.
title_full	Understanding and imitating unfamiliar actions: distinct underlying mechanisms.
title_fullStr	Understanding and imitating unfamiliar actions: distinct underlying mechanisms.
title_full_unstemmed	Understanding and imitating unfamiliar actions: distinct underlying mechanisms.
title_sort	understanding and imitating unfamiliar actions: distinct underlying mechanisms.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2012
url	https://doaj.org/article/8a0695c67312454d8011a753cc729bc7
work_keys_str_mv	AT joanaccarmo understandingandimitatingunfamiliaractionsdistinctunderlyingmechanisms AT raffaellairumiati understandingandimitatingunfamiliaractionsdistinctunderlyingmechanisms AT antoninovallesi understandingandimitatingunfamiliaractionsdistinctunderlyingmechanisms
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Understanding and imitating unfamiliar actions: distinct underlying mechanisms.

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