Department of Experimental Medicine, Section of Human Physiology, University of Genoa, Genoa 16132, Italy.
IRCCS Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi, Milan 20148, Italy.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2020 Jan 30;15(1):123-134. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsaa021.
Humans can acquire information on others' motor outputs (action prediction) and intentions (action understanding) according to their individual motor repertoire and to the detected gesture's features (e.g. temporal patterns). We aimed at dissociating between action prediction and action understanding abilities in soccer players and novices observing soccer action videos including correct timing pass (CTP) or delayed pass (DP). First, we used an occluding paradigm to evaluate participants' ability to predict the correct time to pass the ball. Although soccer players showed reduced reaction times, all subjects showed a similar pattern of performance: during DP observation, responses appeared delayed with respect to the other conditions but anticipated with respect to the observed DP. In a separate experiment, we investigated the ability to recognize CTP vs DP and the modulation of primary motor cortex (M1) excitability associated to video observation. Only soccer players showed selective modulation of M1 according to the plausibility of the observed action, with increased excitability during the observation of the CTP and in a phase preceding the DP. In conclusion, action prediction ability seems to be independent from the individual motor repertoire. By contrast, only subjects with previously acquired sensorimotor skills are able to infer the observed action's long-term intention.
人类可以根据个体的运动技能和检测到的手势特征（例如，时间模式）来获取他人的运动输出信息（动作预测）和意图（动作理解）。我们旨在区分足球运动员和新手在观察包括正确时机传球（CTP）或延迟传球（DP）的足球动作视频时的动作预测和动作理解能力。首先，我们使用遮挡范式来评估参与者预测传球正确时间的能力。尽管足球运动员的反应时间更短，但所有受试者的表现模式相似：在 DP 观察期间，与其他条件相比，反应似乎延迟，但与观察到的 DP 相比，反应则提前。在另一个实验中，我们研究了识别 CTP 与 DP 的能力以及与视频观察相关的初级运动皮层（M1）兴奋性的调制。只有足球运动员根据观察到的动作的可能性表现出 M1 的选择性调制，在观察 CTP 期间以及 DP 之前的一个阶段兴奋性增加。总之，动作预测能力似乎与个体的运动技能无关。相比之下，只有具有先前获得的感觉运动技能的受试者才能推断出观察到的动作的长期意图。
