Action Observation

Question 1

Which neural region is critical for sensorimotor integration by maintaining an internal representation of the body’s state? (Wolpert et al.)

Answer 1

Superior parietal lobe

Question 2

What has been found when performing both mental rotation tasks and predicting where body parts should be? (Gardner and Potts)

Answer 2

The duration of mental rotation time correlates with the actual rotation time; there’s a relationship between imagined and actual action

Question 3

Which brain areas are activated for both executed and imagined movement? (Jeanerod et al.)

Answer 3

Frontal areas BA 6; parietal areas BA 40

Question 4

Describe the differences found in Choudjury et al.’s study between adults and adolescents when executing and imagining the touch fingers to thumb task, and triple 8 within parallel lines task

Answer 4

Touch fingers to thumb: positive correlations between imagined and executed in both age groups; figure 8: a reduced correlation for adolescents compared to adults, suggesting they need to develop more fine tuning for these cognitive representations

Question 5

When recordings were taken by Blanke et al. from depth electrodes in epileptic patients, what was found when the yellow area (around the posterior parieto-temporal sulcus) was activated?

Answer 5

They reported having an out of body experience (OBE)

Question 6

Why are out of body experiences (OBEs) more likely to occur lying down than standing vertically, in relation to vestibular, somatosensory and visual cues? (Lopez and Blanke)

Answer 6

When we’re standing upright, our head is aligned with gravity so otolith receptors are in an optimal orientation for coding gravitational acceleration; these signals merge with those from the mechanoreceptors of the plantar sole (informing brain about body position with respect to gravity); When lying down we don’t receive those signals so we’re more likely to misperceive and mis-integrate sensory and environmental cues with respect to the body

Question 7

In which condition do patients perceive body sensations very differently to normal controls?

Answer 7

Hypoxia during trauma (deficiency in amount of oxygen reaching the tissues)

Question 8

Our body schema, or representation of our body, can become to an extent independent of sensory inputs from the environment. In which phenomenon does this seem to occur?

Answer 8

Phantom limbs

Question 9

When Dr. Chandran stroked the cheek of his phantom limb patient, what occurred?

Answer 9

He felt it in his arm; it was hypothesised that the face area represented in somatosensory cortex had expanded to his arm area

Question 10

Which illusion shows how important vision is in relation to proprioception, and what causes the illusion? (Botvink and Cohen)

Answer 10

Rubber hand illusion - when synchronous stroking of seen fake and occluded real hand, leading to a proprioceptive drift (feeling that the real hand is where the fake hand is; shift of subjective ownership); Vision integrates with touch to result in an illusory percept

Question 11

What other experimental conditions have replicated the rubber hand illusion, and who shows a delayed induction to this effect?

Answer 11

Block of wood and affective responses (histamine, temperature and knife attack - snatch hand away); Children with autism (may be a multisensory integration deficit)

Question 12

What have bimodal neurones in the periarcuate cortex of macaques (analogous to PMC in humans) been demonstrated to fire in response to, and when do they fire the greatest? (Rizzolatti et al.)

Answer 12

Visual inputs presented on or near the hand and touch of the skin; Fire greatest for the concurrent presentation of visual and tactile input (multisensory)

Question 13

Describe the receptive fields of bimodal neurones

Answer 13

They’re limb centred (activation profiles remap with movement of the limb); they expand and contract, and move around

Question 14

Sensory perception is perceptually based on which two factors?

Answer 14

The action goal; proximity of environmental inputs to limbs

Question 15

What is peripersonal space?

Answer 15

Reachable/actable space near the body (within 30cm of hands or tools); immediate space updates with limb movement to incorporate where you are acting (not retinotopically mapped)

Question 16

What do OBE, phantom limb phenomena, rubber hand illusion and hand/vision bimodal neurons tell us about the representation/schema of our body?

Answer 16

It’s dynamic and flexible; can also incorporate non-animate objects

Question 17

Receptive fields of bimodal neurons in which region of macaque monkey brains enlarge and shrink depending on the use of tools? (Iriki)

Answer 17

Anterior inferior parietal sulcus (same neurons encode for shoulder-centred frame of reference as visual information, but their rate of firing expands when there’s an expansion of peripersonal space)

Question 18

There is a link between our actions and the environment. How does Gibson (1977) suggest we may not be predisposed to work with tools?

Answer 18

The feature/quality of an object allows an action to happen (e.g certain objects give off affordances, such as handle on a mug); if object is wanted/appropriate it’s released/enacted; if unwanted/inappropriate it’s inhibited/suppressed

Question 19

Turker and Ellis showed participants pictures of everyday common tools, and had to respond with L or R hand as to whether it’s upright or upside down. What were the results, and what do the findings suggest?

Answer 19

When the handle was facing the right RT was much faster to respond (hand dominance took over) and opposite effect when inverted; Suggests there are learned links between the motor system and the environment

Question 20

Cream-Regehr et al. investigated whether there’s a neural link between graspable objects and somatotopic activation (triggering areas typically associated with using a particular tool), by Ps showing graspable tools, shapes and scrambled images. What did they find?

Answer 20

Greater left posterior parietal activation for tools, as well as activation of fusiform and middle temporal gyri - identification of the function of the tool and the body part that goes with it

Question 21

Who said “every mental representation of a movement awakens to some degree the actual movement which it is object”?, and who called this “sympathetic magic?”

Answer 21

William James; Edward Thorndike

Question 22

In van Leeuwen et al.s ideomotor priming task, participants were cued with a model of a hand lifting a finger or making a shape. They were then instructed to follow the same action (congruent) or a different one (incongruent). What did they find?

Answer 22

Congruent responses were faster than incongruent; responses to fingers were faster than spatial (shape) cues; suggesting that increasing working memory load facilitates behavioural imitation

Question 23

Mu rhythms/waves are synchronised patterns of electrical activity (8-13hz) from sensorimotor activation, and recorded over motor cortex across a large number or neurons. What happens to this activation when observing, imagining or performing an action?

Answer 23

Mu activation is suppressed/attenuated/abolished (desynchronised); its activation is seen when at rest

Question 24

What did Muthukumaraswamy et al. find about Mu rhythm modulation during observation of an object directed grasp?

Answer 24

Observing precision grip was associated with greater mu synchronisation (attenuation) than observing a flat hand; suggesting it’s sensitive to different forms of observed behaviours (more complexity = more attenuation)

Question 25

What did Kilner et al. find when investigating variabilities in trajectories of motion paths when observing biological movement?

Answer 25

Watching a human agent perform an incongruent action disrupts the observer’s actions

Question 26

What evidence was found by Saygin et al. to suggest we are sensitive to movement patterns of biological agents?

Answer 26

They captured motion parametres of actors by strapping lights to their joints in a dark room; Ps were able to recognise features such as gender, mood/emotional state, etc; activations in premotor cortex and inferior temporal cortex; suggests these areas are sensitive to algorithmic patterns of other people’s bodies

Question 27

Sensitivity to movement patterns of biological agents and body movements are distinct from which other areas of processing? (Peelin et al.)

Answer 27

General body form sites and face sites.

Question 28

Dissociation of extrastriate body and biological-motion selective areas have been found by manipulation of visual-motor congruency. Which areas are these according to Kontaris et al.?

Answer 28

Posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) responds preferentially to biological motion; Extrastriate body area (inferior temporal sulcus), and fusiform body area (lateral fusiform gyrus) respond strongly and selectively to static and dynamic images of human bodies and body parts

Question 29

What other factors other than biology do Press et al., suggest play a role in eliciting movement imitation?

Answer 29

Role of experience; visual shape/features; meaning of action

Question 30

Press et al. showed Ps visual features of human or robotic agents, starting from a neutral position, then moving to make a shape. Conditions were human naturalistic/schematic and robotic naturalistic/schematic. What was found in the initial testing?

Answer 30

Faster RT in compatible conditions, but not much difference between naturalistic and schematic; smaller difference between compatibility in robot condition but still there; shows visual features are important in initial testing

Question 31

What occurred by day 2 of Press et al.’s study, and what does this suggest?

Answer 31

RTs were much faster for compatible in both human and robotic conditions; Suggests experience plays a role, and that the effector shape is sufficient to allow action observation - matching system to distinguish human from robotic movement; automatic imitation occurs for robotic as well as human movement

Question 32

Describe how Hardwick and Edwards found that observed reach trajectory influences reach kinematics in prehension

Answer 32

Ps sat either opposite to or side-on to the experimenter; the difference between experimenter making an exaggerated upwards movement and P making a straight line movement was compared; high reach was slightly higher when watching an exaggerated movement, suggesting watching another influences/resonates with our own actions

Question 33

Bayliss et al. paired happy or disgusted faces with target objects, and gaze direction served as “Posner” endogenous cues towards the targets. What were the results, and what does this suggest?

Answer 33

RTs were faster when happy faces directed attention towards the target, and objects cued by happy faces were liked better than those cued by disgusted faces; Suggests that emotion comprehension modulates the gaze direction cue; affective evaluations are influenced by observed gaze direction and emotional expression

Question 34

What accidental discovery was found by Rizzolatti et al. (1988) in the inferior area 6 of macaque monkeys, when responding to the experimenter grasping nuts for reward?

Answer 34

Functional organisation in grasp shaping; different populations of neurons respond to different grasp shapes

Question 35

According to Galelesse et al., what have mirror neurons in monkeys been shown to respond to?

Answer 35

The sight of goal-directed actions only, as long as it’s achieved (even if out of sight); to the sound of an action (multimodal); when action is performed by an agent (hand-object interactions) but not to tools

Question 36

In Ulmilta et al.’s study, monkeys viewed both the end of an action and a goal directed action with the end of it hidden. Compare their firing rates when observing these actions, when no goal was present, and when they enacted a memory-guided reach after a delay

Answer 36

Activations were found when goals were present, even when hidden, and after a delay, but not when goals were absent

Question 37

Compare the visual responses of monkeys to experimenters either putting food in their mouth or a cup, and their own motor responses in both these tasks. What do these findings suggest?

Answer 37

Activations occurred in both cases when putting food in their mouth but not in the cup; Suggests that eating is interesting and ecologically relevant, but less so for placement in a cup (task dependency)

Question 38

What brain region in monkeys does Fogassi et al. suggest responds to both action organisation and intention understanding when observing actions?

Answer 38

Parietal lobe

Question 39

Describe how a dissociation in subpopulations of neurons has been found in monkeys

Answer 39

During the execution of goal-directed movements: both neurons 1 and 2 were activated; when observing the experimenter perform actions in extrapersonal space, neuron 1 was discharged more strongly, but the opposite was found when executed in peripersonal space (discharging neuron 2)

Question 40

Describe the interactions between visual and motor familiarity in action observation with dancers in Merino et al.’s study

Answer 40

Though there was no significant interaction between visual familiarity, motor resonance stayed within their gender (interaction between dancer gender and movement gender)

Question 41

What neural findings in Merino et al.’s study suggest we are influenced by meaningful actions rather than physical goals?

Answer 41

There were greater activations in left dorsal premotor area, left inferior parietal sulcus, and right cerebellum when observing the same gender perform, and these were suppressed when watching the opposite sex; suggests the importance of experience

Question 42

What did Gazzola et al. find about the mirror system’s response to complex human and robotic movements?

Answer 42

Dorsal premotor areas respond for both human and robotic agents; suggesting these activations occur in response to meaningful actions rather than biology of the agent/effector

Question 43

What evidence did Casile et al. present about monkey brains to suggest there is a dissociation between developmental and learning aspects of the mirror neuron system?

Answer 43

Neurons in the STS exhibit purely visual responses but not during the execution of movement, whilst mirror neurons in areas F5c and PFG respond both during observation and execution of goal-directed movements; suggests there needs to be an association/learning to link them

Question 44

At the beginning of development in the human or monkey infant, there is no clear mapping between an observed motor act and its internal motor representation. During development, what does repeated synchronous co-activation of mirror and visual representations of own movements lead to?

Answer 44

The emergence of neurons that exhibit a visuomotor coupling (mimicking) between a specific action and its visual representation from an egocentric point of view; these representations are then generalised to the actions of others (motor resonance)

Question 45

What was found in Cattaneo et al.’s study to suggest the impairment of action chains in autism and its possible role in intention understanding?

Answer 45

Autistic children and typically-developing children observed a person both reaching for and placing a piece of food in their mouth, and reaching for a piece of paper and placing it in a cup on their shoulder; Though controls showed greater EMG activity for the eating response, autistic kids showed no difference between the two conditions (dissociation for linking the associations)