Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute, Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto, Japan.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2007 Sep;2(3):206-16. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsm017.
Computer-animated characters are common in popular culture and have begun to be used as experimental tools in social cognitive neurosciences. Here we investigated how appearance of these characters' influences perception of their actions. Subjects were presented with different characters animated either with motion data captured from human actors or by interpolating between poses (keyframes) designed by an animator, and were asked to categorize the motion as biological or artificial. The response bias towards 'biological', derived from the Signal Detection Theory, decreases with characters' anthropomorphism, while sensitivity is only affected by the simplest rendering style, point-light displays. fMRI showed that the response bias correlates positively with activity in the mentalizing network including left temporoparietal junction and anterior cingulate cortex, and negatively with regions sustaining motor resonance. The absence of significant effect of the characters on the brain activity suggests individual differences in the neural responses to unfamiliar artificial agents. While computer-animated characters are invaluable tools to investigate the neural bases of social cognition, further research is required to better understand how factors such as anthropomorphism affect their perception, in order to optimize their appearance for entertainment, research or therapeutic purposes.
计算机动画角色在流行文化中很常见，并且已经开始被用作社会认知神经科学中的实验工具。在这里，我们研究了这些角色的外观如何影响对其动作的感知。研究向被试呈现了不同的角色动画，这些动画的运动数据是从人类演员的动作中捕捉到的，或者是由动画师在关键帧（姿势）之间插值生成的，然后要求被试将运动分类为生物性或人工性。源自信号检测理论的“生物性”反应偏向随着角色的拟人化程度降低而降低，而敏感性仅受最简单的渲染风格（点光源显示）的影响。fMRI 显示，反应偏向与包括左颞顶联合区和前扣带皮层在内的心理化网络的活动呈正相关，与维持运动共鸣的区域呈负相关。角色对大脑活动没有显著影响表明，个体对不熟悉的人工代理的神经反应存在差异。虽然计算机动画角色是研究社会认知神经基础的宝贵工具，但需要进一步研究以更好地了解拟人化等因素如何影响它们的感知，以便在娱乐、研究或治疗目的方面优化其外观。
