Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Soc Neurosci. 2010;5(3):272-84. doi: 10.1080/17470910903395767. Epub 2010 Feb 17.
Putative contributions of a human mirror neuron system (hMNS) to the perception of social information have been assessed by measuring the suppression of EEG oscillations in the mu/alpha (8-12 Hz), beta (15-25 Hz) and low-gamma (25-25 Hz) ranges while participants processed social information revealed by point-light displays of human motion. Identical dynamic displays were presented and participants were instructed to distinguish the intention, the emotion, or the gender of a moving image of a person, while they performed an adapted odd-ball task. Relative to a baseline presenting a nonbiological but meaningful motion display, all three biological motion conditions reduced the EEG amplitude in the mu/alpha and beta ranges, but not in the low-gamma range. Suppression was larger in the intention than in the emotion and gender conditions, with no difference between the latter two. Moreover, the suppression in the intention condition was negatively correlated with an accepted measure of empathy (EQ), revealing that participants high in empathy scores manifested less suppression. For intention and emotion the suppression was larger at occipital than at central sites, suggesting that factors other than motor system were in play while processing social information embedded in the motion of point-light displays.
通过测量参与者在处理由光点显示的人体运动揭示的社会信息时，mu/alpha（8-12Hz）、beta（15-25Hz）和低伽马（25-25Hz）范围内的脑电振荡的抑制情况，评估了人类镜像神经元系统（hMNS）对社会信息感知的推测贡献。当参与者执行改编的奇偶任务时，呈现相同的动态显示，并指示他们区分一个人的移动图像的意图、情绪或性别。与呈现非生物但有意义的运动显示的基线相比，所有三种生物运动条件都降低了 mu/alpha 和 beta 范围内的脑电幅度，但在低伽马范围内没有降低。意图条件下的抑制比情绪和性别条件下的抑制更大，后两者之间没有差异。此外，意图条件下的抑制与公认的同理心（EQ）测量值呈负相关，表明同理心得分高的参与者表现出的抑制作用较小。对于意图和情绪，在枕部的抑制比在中央部位的抑制更大，这表明在处理嵌入光点显示的运动中的社会信息时，除了运动系统之外的其他因素也在起作用。
