Department of Psychology, Yale University, PO Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2011 Oct;6(5):602-11. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsq087. Epub 2010 Nov 22.
Prior studies have demonstrated that the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is involved in analyzing the intentions underlying actions and is sensitive to the context within which actions occur. However, it is debated whether the pSTS is actually sensitive to goals underlying actions, or whether previous studies can be interpreted to suggest that the pSTS is instead involved in the allocation of visual attention towards unexpected events. In addition, little is known about whether the pSTS is specialized for reasoning about the actions of social agents or whether the pSTS is sensitive to the actions of both animate and inanimate entities. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated activation in response to passive viewing of successful and unsuccessful animate and inanimate goal-directed actions. Activation in the right pSTS was stronger in response to failed actions compared to successful actions, suggesting that the pSTS plays a role in encoding the goals underlying actions. Activation in the pSTS did not differentiate between animate and inanimate actions, suggesting that the pSTS is sensitive to the goal-directed actions of both animate and inanimate entities.
先前的研究表明，后上颞沟（pSTS）参与分析动作背后的意图，并对动作发生的情境敏感。然而，关于 pSTS 是否真的对动作背后的目标敏感，或者之前的研究是否可以被解释为表明 pSTS 反而参与了对意外事件的视觉注意力分配，仍存在争议。此外，人们对 pSTS 是否专门用于推理社会代理人的行为知之甚少，或者 pSTS 是否对有生命和无生命实体的行为都敏感。在这里，我们使用功能磁共振成像技术，研究了对成功和不成功的有生命和无生命目标导向动作的被动观察的反应中的激活。与成功的动作相比，右 pSTS 对失败的动作的反应更强，这表明 pSTS 在对动作背后的目标进行编码方面发挥了作用。pSTS 的激活并没有区分有生命和无生命的动作，这表明 pSTS 对有生命和无生命实体的目标导向动作都敏感。
