Calvo-Merino Beatriz, Grèzes Julie, Glaser Daniel E, Passingham Richard E, Haggard Patrick
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University College London, 17 Queen Square, WC1N 3AR London, United Kingdom.
Curr Biol. 2006 Oct 10;16(19):1905-10. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2006.07.065.
The human brain contains specialized circuits for observing and understanding actions. Previous studies have not distinguished whether this "mirror system" uses specialized motor representations or general processes of visual inference and knowledge to understand observed actions. We report the first neuroimaging study to distinguish between these alternatives. Purely motoric influences on perception have been shown behaviorally, but their neural bases are unknown. We used fMRI to reveal the neural bases of motor influences on action observation. We controlled for visual and knowledge effects by studying expert dancers. Some ballet moves are performed by only one gender. However, male and female dancers train together and have equal visual familiarity with all moves. Male and female dancers viewed videos of gender-specific male and female ballet moves. We found greater premotor, parietal, and cerebellar activity when dancers viewed moves from their own motor repertoire, compared to opposite-gender moves that they frequently saw but did not perform. Our results show that mirror circuits have a purely motor response over and above visual representations of action. We understand actions not only by visual recognition, but also motorically. In addition, we confirm that the cerebellum is part of the action observation network.
人类大脑包含用于观察和理解动作的特殊回路。以往的研究尚未区分这种“镜像系统”是使用特殊的运动表征，还是视觉推理和知识的一般过程来理解观察到的动作。我们报告了第一项区分这些可能性的神经影像学研究。对感知的纯粹运动影响已在行为层面得到证实，但其神经基础尚不清楚。我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来揭示运动对动作观察影响的神经基础。我们通过研究专业舞者来控制视觉和知识效应。有些芭蕾舞动作只由一种性别表演。然而，男女舞者一起训练，对所有动作都有相同程度的视觉熟悉度。男女舞者观看特定性别的男性和女性芭蕾舞动作的视频。我们发现，与他们经常看到但未表演过的异性动作相比，当舞者观看自己运动技能范围内的动作视频时，其运动前区、顶叶和小脑的活动更强烈。我们的结果表明，镜像回路除了动作的视觉表征外，还有纯粹的运动反应。我们不仅通过视觉识别来理解动作，还通过运动方式来理解。此外，我们证实小脑是动作观察网络的一部分。
