Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Brain Res. 2011 Apr 6;1383:196-205. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2011.01.073. Epub 2011 Jan 31.
Perceiving and interpreting social information richness is something that humans do automatically whenever they engage in social interactions. Numerous studies have identified neural substrates, including mirror neurons that may enable such social perception. In this study, we temporarily disrupted activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). We investigated whether this cortical region, that is hypothesized to include mirror neurons, plays a central role in social perception. The LIFG was stimulated in the experimental condition (n=18), the vertex was targeted in the control condition (n=19). Disrupting LIFG, but not vertex, increased reaction times during an emotion recognition task, and eliminated the suppression of the 8-12Hz EEG μ rhythm, postulated as an index of mirroring activity. The results of this study provide further evidence for the role of the human mirror neuron system (MNS) in social perception, and indicate that the MNS can be measured with EEG.
感知和解释社会信息丰富度是人类在进行社交互动时自动完成的事情。许多研究已经确定了神经基质，包括可能使这种社会感知成为可能的镜像神经元。在这项研究中，我们使用重复经颅磁刺激（rTMS）暂时破坏了左额下回（LIFG）的活动。我们研究了这个被假设包含镜像神经元的皮质区域是否在社会感知中起核心作用。在实验条件下刺激 LIFG（n=18），在对照条件下刺激顶点（n=19）。在情绪识别任务中，破坏 LIFG 而不是顶点会增加反应时间，并消除被假设为镜像活动指标的 8-12Hz EEG μ 节律的抑制。这项研究的结果为人类镜像神经元系统（MNS）在社会感知中的作用提供了进一步的证据，并表明可以使用 EEG 测量 MNS。
