The Brain and Mind Institute, London, Ontario, Canada.
J Neurophysiol. 2012 Mar;107(6):1564-70. doi: 10.1152/jn.00748.2011. Epub 2011 Dec 21.
A compelling idea in cognitive neuroscience links motor control and action observation. Recent work supports the idea that a link exists not just between action observation and action planning, but between observation and motor learning. Several studies support the idea that cortical regions that underlie active motor learning also play a role in motor learning by observing. The goal of the present study was to test whether motor learning by observing is effector dependent (as in active motor learning) or effector independent (as in studies of action observation and mirror neurons). Right-handed human subjects observed a video depicting another individual learning to reach to visual targets in a force field (FF). The video showed reaching in a clockwise FF (CWFF) or a counter-clockwise FF (CCWFF), and depicted an individual reaching with the right or left arm. After observation, all subjects were asked to reach in a CWFF, using their right arm. As in our prior studies, subjects who observed a CWFF prior to the CWFF test performed better than subjects who observed a CCWFF. We show here that this effect was seen both when observers watched others reach using their right arm, and when observers watched others learning to reach using the left arm. These results suggest that information about novel forces learned through observation is represented in an effector-independent coordinate frame, and are consistent with the idea that the brain links not only observation and movement, but motor learning as well, through abstract representations of actions.
认知神经科学中有一个引人注目的观点，即将运动控制和动作观察联系起来。最近的工作支持这样一种观点，即不仅在动作观察和动作规划之间存在联系，而且在观察和运动学习之间也存在联系。几项研究支持这样一种观点，即作为主动运动学习基础的皮质区域也在观察运动学习中发挥作用。本研究的目的是检验观察运动学习是否依赖效应器（如主动运动学习）或不依赖效应器（如动作观察和镜像神经元的研究）。右手人类受试者观察一段视频，视频中描绘了另一个人在力场（FF）中学习到达视觉目标。视频显示在顺时针 FF（CWFF）或逆时针 FF（CCWFF）中进行的伸展，并且描绘了一个人用右臂或左臂进行伸展。观察后，所有受试者都被要求用右臂在 CWFF 中伸展。与我们之前的研究一样，在 CWFF 测试前观察 CWFF 的受试者的表现优于观察 CCWFF 的受试者。我们在这里表明，当观察者观察到其他人使用右臂伸展，或者观察到其他人使用左臂学习伸展时，都会出现这种效果。这些结果表明，通过观察学习到的关于新力量的信息是在不依赖效应器的坐标系中表示的，这与大脑不仅通过动作的抽象表示来连接观察和运动，而且还连接运动学习的观点是一致的。
