Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
Cognitive Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2017 Nov 2;7(1):14967. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-14476-9.
Processing biological motion is fundamental for everyday life activities, such as social interaction, motor learning and nonverbal communication. The ability to detect the nature of a motor pattern has been investigated by means of point-light displays (PLD), sets of moving light points reproducing human kinematics, easily recognizable as meaningful once in motion. Although PLD are rudimentary, the human brain can decipher their content including social intentions. Neuroimaging studies suggest that inferring the social meaning conveyed by PLD could rely on both the Mirror Neuron System (MNS) and the Mentalizing System (MS), but their specific role to this endeavor remains uncertain. We describe a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment in which participants had to judge whether visually presented PLD and videoclips of human-like walkers (HL) were facing towards or away from them. Results show that coding for stimulus direction specifically engages the MNS when considering PLD moving away from the observer, while the nature of the stimulus reveals a dissociation between MNS -mainly involved in coding for PLD- and MS, recruited by HL moving away. These results suggest that the contribution of the two systems can be modulated by the nature of the observed stimulus and its potential for social involvement.
处理生物运动对于日常生活活动至关重要，例如社交互动、运动学习和非言语交流。通过点光源显示（PLD）可以研究检测运动模式性质的能力，这些点光源的运动点再现了人体运动学，一旦运动起来很容易被识别为有意义的。尽管 PLD 很基本，但人类大脑可以解读其内容，包括社交意图。神经影像学研究表明，推断 PLD 传达的社会意义可能依赖于镜像神经元系统（MNS）和心理化系统（MS），但它们在这方面的具体作用仍不确定。我们描述了一项功能磁共振成像实验，参与者必须判断视觉呈现的 PLD 和类人行走者（HL）的视频片段是面向他们还是远离他们。结果表明，当考虑远离观察者的 PLD 运动时，刺激方向的编码专门涉及 MNS，而刺激的性质揭示了 MNS 和 MS 之间的分离，MS 主要参与 PLD 的编码，由远离观察者的 HL 激活。这些结果表明，两个系统的贡献可以通过观察到的刺激的性质及其潜在的社交参与度来调节。
