Department of Psychology, University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome, Italy.
Eur J Neurosci. 2010 Nov;32(10):1754-64. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2010.07432.x. Epub 2010 Oct 7.
The mirror-neuron system (MNS) connects sensory information that describes an action with a motor plan for performing that action. Recently, studies using the repetition-suppression paradigm have shown that strong activation occurs in the left premotor and superior temporal areas in response to action-related, but not non-action-related, stimuli. However, few studies have investigated the mirror system by using event-related potentials (ERPs) and employing more than one sensory modality in the same sample. In the present study, we compared ERPs that occurred in response to visual and auditory action/non-action-related stimuli to search for evidence of overlapping activations for the two modalities. The results confirmed previous studies that investigated auditory MNS and extended these studies by showing that similar activity existed for the visual modality. Furthermore, we confirmed that the responses to action- and non-action-related stimuli were distinct by demonstrating that, in the case of action-related stimuli, activity was restricted mainly to the left hemisphere, whereas for non-action-related stimuli, activity tended to be more bilateral. The time course of ERP brain sources showed a clear sequence of events that subtended the processing of action-related stimuli. This activity seemed to occur in the left temporal lobe and, in agreement with findings from previous studies of the mirror-neuron network, the information involved appeared to be conveyed subsequently to the premotor area. The left temporo-parietal activity observed following a delay might reflect processing associated with stimulus-related motor preparation.
镜像神经元系统（MNS）将描述动作的感觉信息与执行该动作的运动计划联系起来。最近，使用重复抑制范式的研究表明，在左前运动区和上颞区会对与动作相关的刺激而非非动作相关的刺激产生强烈的激活。然而，很少有研究通过使用事件相关电位（ERP）并在同一样本中使用多种感觉模态来研究镜像系统。在本研究中，我们比较了对视觉和听觉动作/非动作相关刺激的 ERP，以寻找两种模态重叠激活的证据。结果证实了之前研究听觉 MNS 的研究，并通过显示视觉模态存在类似的活动扩展了这些研究。此外，我们通过证明对于动作相关的刺激，活动主要局限于左侧半球，而对于非动作相关的刺激，活动倾向于更双侧，从而证实了对动作相关和非动作相关刺激的反应是不同的。ERP 脑源的时程显示了一个清晰的事件序列，这些事件构成了对动作相关刺激的处理。这种活动似乎发生在左颞叶，并且与镜像神经元网络的先前研究结果一致，所涉及的信息似乎随后被传递到前运动区。在延迟后观察到的左颞顶活动可能反映了与刺激相关的运动准备相关的处理。
