Conson Massimiliano, Polito Francesco, Di Rosa Alessandro, Trojano Luigi, Cordasco Gennaro, Esposito Anna, Turi Marco
Department of Psychology, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Caserta, Italy.
Stella Maris Mediterraneo Foundation, Chiaromonte, Potenza, Italy.
R Soc Open Sci. 2020 Dec 16;7(12):200948. doi: 10.1098/rsos.200948. eCollection 2020 Dec.
Classical neurophysiological studies demonstrated that the monkey brain is equipped with neurons selectively representing the visual shape of the primate hand. Neuroimaging in humans provided data suggesting that a similar representation can be found in humans. Here, we investigated the selectivity of hand representation in humans by means of the visual adaptation technique. Results showed that participants' judgement of human-likeness of a visual probe representing a human hand was specifically reduced by a visual adaptation procedure when using a human hand adaptor but not when using an anthropoid robotic hand or a non-primate animal paw adaptor. Instead, human-likeness of the anthropoid robotic hand was affected by both human and robotic adaptors. No effect was found when using a non-primate animal paw as adaptor or probe. These results support the existence of specific neural mechanisms encoding human hand in the human's visual system.
经典神经生理学研究表明，猴子大脑中配备有选择性地代表灵长类动物手部视觉形状的神经元。人类神经成像提供的数据表明，人类也能发现类似的表征。在这里，我们通过视觉适应技术研究了人类手部表征的选择性。结果显示，当使用人类手部适配器时，视觉适应程序会使参与者对代表人类手部的视觉探针的类人程度判断显著降低，而使用类人机器人手或非灵长类动物爪子适配器时则不会。相反，类人机器人手的类人程度受到人类和机器人适配器的影响。使用非灵长类动物爪子作为适配器或探针时未发现影响。这些结果支持了人类视觉系统中存在编码人类手部的特定神经机制。
