Brass Marcel, Ruby Perrine, Spengler Stephanie
Department of Experimental Psychology and Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Ghent University, Henri-Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 Aug 27;364(1528):2359-67. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0066.
There is converging evidence that the observation of an action activates a corresponding motor representation in the observer through a 'mirror-matching' mechanism. However, research on such 'shared representations' of perception and action has widely neglected the question of how we can distinguish our own motor intentions from externally triggered motor representations. By investigating the inhibition of imitative response tendencies, as an index for the control of shared representations, we can show that self-other distinction plays a fundamental role in the control of shared representations. Furthermore, we demonstrate that overlapping brain activations can be found in the anterior fronto-median cortex (aFMC) and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) area for the control of shared representations and complex social-cognitive tasks, such as mental state attribution. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, we functionally dissociate the roles of TPJ and aFMC during the control of shared representations. Finally, we propose a hypothesis stating that the control of shared representations might be the missing link between functions of the mirror system and mental state attribution.
越来越多的证据表明，对一个动作的观察会通过“镜像匹配”机制在观察者身上激活相应的运动表征。然而，关于感知和动作的这种“共享表征”的研究广泛忽略了一个问题，即我们如何将自己的运动意图与外部触发的运动表征区分开来。通过研究对模仿反应倾向的抑制，作为控制共享表征的一个指标，我们可以表明自我与他人的区分在共享表征的控制中起着根本性的作用。此外，我们证明，在控制共享表征以及复杂的社会认知任务（如心理状态归因）时，在前额中内侧皮质（aFMC）和颞顶联合区（TPJ）可以发现重叠的大脑激活。在一项功能磁共振成像实验中，我们在控制共享表征的过程中从功能上区分了TPJ和aFMC的作用。最后，我们提出一个假设，即共享表征的控制可能是镜像系统功能与心理状态归因之间缺失的环节。
