Common and distinct brain activation to viewing dynamic sequences of face and hand movements

The superior temporal sulcus (STS) and surrounding lateral temporal and inferior parietal cortices are an important part of a network involved in the processing of biological movement. It is unclear whether the STS responds to the movement of different body parts uniformly, or if the response depends on the body part that is moving. Here we examined brain activity to recognizing sequences of face and hand movements as well as radial grating motion, controlling for differences in movement dynamics between stimuli. A region of the right posterior STS (pSTS) showed common activation to both face and hand motion, relative to radial grating motion, with no significant difference between responses to face and hand motion in this region. Distinct responses to face motion relative to hand motion were observed in the right mid-STS, while the right posterior inferior temporal sulcus (pITS) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL) showed greater responses to hand motion relative to face motion. These findings indicate that while there may be distinct processing of different body part motion in lateral temporal and inferior parietal cortices, the response of the pSTS is not body part specific. This region may provide input to other parts of a network involved with processing human actions with a high-level visual description of biological motion.

[1]  B. Bertenthal,et al.  Does Perception of Biological Motion Rely on Specific Brain Regions? , 2001, NeuroImage.

[2]  M. Corbetta,et al.  Extrastriate body area in human occipital cortex responds to the performance of motor actions , 2004, Nature Neuroscience.

[3]  Alan C. Evans,et al.  Specific Involvement of Human Parietal Systems and the Amygdala in the Perception of Biological Motion , 1996, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[4]  J. Haxby,et al.  Parallel Visual Motion Processing Streams for Manipulable Objects and Human Movements , 2002, Neuron.

[5]  J. Mazziotta,et al.  Lateralization of the Human Mirror Neuron System , 2006, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[6]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the understanding and imitation of action , 2001, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[7]  Aina Puce,et al.  Configural Processing of Biological Motion in Human Superior Temporal Sulcus , 2005, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[8]  T. Allison,et al.  Social perception from visual cues: role of the STS region , 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[9]  Scott T. Grafton,et al.  Actions or Hand-Object Interactions? Human Inferior Frontal Cortex and Action Observation , 2003, Neuron.

[10]  Aina Puce,et al.  Digit representation is more than just hand waving. , 2004, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[11]  J C Mazziotta,et al.  Reafferent copies of imitated actions in the right superior temporal cortex , 2001, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[12]  I. Johnsrude,et al.  The problem of functional localization in the human brain , 2002, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[13]  B. Argall,et al.  Integration of Auditory and Visual Information about Objects in Superior Temporal Sulcus , 2004, Neuron.

[14]  J. Coull.  fMRI studies of temporal attention: allocating attention within, or towards, time. , 2004, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[15]  Wolfgang Prinz,et al.  Recognizing one’s own clapping: The role of temporal cues , 2004, Psychological research.

[16]  T. Allison,et al.  Temporal Cortex Activation in Humans Viewing Eye and Mouth Movements , 1998, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[17]  C. Frith,et al.  Movement and Mind: A Functional Imaging Study of Perception and Interpretation of Complex Intentional Movement Patterns , 2000, NeuroImage.

[18]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Neural Circuits Underlying Imitation Learning of Hand Actions An Event-Related fMRI Study , 2004, Neuron.

[19]  Aina Puce,et al.  Electrophysiology and brain imaging of biological motion. , 2003, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[20]  A. Meltzoff,et al.  The detection of contingency and animacy from simple animations in the human brain. , 2003, Cerebral cortex.

[21]  D Yves von Cramon,et al.  Sequences of Abstract Nonbiological Stimuli Share Ventral Premotor Cortex with Action Observation and Imagery , 2004, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[22]  Alex Martin,et al.  NEURAL FOUNDATIONS FOR UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL AND MECHANICAL CONCEPTS , 2003, Cognitive neuropsychology.

[23]  C. Kennard,et al.  Distinguishing sensory and motor biases in parietal and frontal neglect. , 2000, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[24]  Jesper Andersson,et al.  Valid conjunction inference with the minimum statistic , 2005, NeuroImage.

[25]  M. Gentilucci,et al.  Grasp with hand and mouth: a kinematic study on healthy subjects. , 2001, Journal of neurophysiology.

[26]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  The Human Body , 2001 .

[27]  Scott T. Grafton,et al.  Localization of grasp representations in humans by positron emission tomography , 1996, Experimental Brain Research.

[28]  Edward E. Smith,et al.  Neuroimaging studies of working memory: , 2003, Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience.

[29]  Frank Tong,et al.  The Face of Controversy , 2001, Science.

[30]  J. Mazziotta,et al.  Cortical mechanisms of human imitation. , 1999, Science.

[31]  Jason B. Mattingley,et al.  Motor role of human inferior parietal lobe revealed in unilateral neglect patients , 1998, Nature.

[32]  R. Zatorre,et al.  Voice-selective areas in human auditory cortex , 2000, Nature.

[33]  H. Forssberg,et al.  Differential fronto-parietal activation depending on force used in a precision grip task: an fMRI study. , 2001, Journal of neurophysiology.

[34]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Action observation activates premotor and parietal areas in a somatotopic manner: an fMRI study , 2001, The European journal of neuroscience.

[35]  Aina Puce,et al.  Viewing the motion of human body parts activates different regions of premotor, temporal, and parietal cortex , 2004, NeuroImage.

[36]  J. Mazziotta,et al.  Grasping the Intentions of Others with One's Own Mirror Neuron System , 2005, PLoS biology.

[37]  T. Allison,et al.  Functional anatomy of biological motion perception in posterior temporal cortex: an FMRI study of eye, mouth and hand movements. , 2005, Cerebral cortex.

[38]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Activation in Posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus Parallels Parameter Inducing the Percept of Animacy , 2005, Neuron.