University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Donders Institute, Radboud University, 6525 GD Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2022 Aug;220:105415. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105415. Epub 2022 Mar 24.
Behavioral evidence shows that experience with an action shapes action perception. Neural mirroring has been suggested as a mechanism underlying this behavioral phenomenon. Suppression of electroencephalogram (EEG) power in the mu frequency band, an index of motor activation, typically reflects neural mirroring. However, contradictory findings exist regarding the association between mu suppression and motor familiarity in infant EEG studies. In this study, we investigated the neural underpinnings reflecting the role of familiarity in action perception. We measured neural processing of familiar (grasp) and novel (tool-use) actions in 9- and 12-month-old infants. Specifically, we measured infants' distinct motor/visual activity and explored functional connectivity associated with these processes. Mu suppression was stronger for grasping than for tool use, whereas significant mu and occipital alpha (indexing visual activity) suppression were evident for both actions. Interestingly, selective motor-visual functional connectivity was found during observation of familiar action, a pattern not observed for novel action. Thus, the neural correlates of perception of familiar actions may be best understood in terms of a functional neural network rather than isolated regional activity. Our findings provide novel insights on analytic approaches for identifying motor-specific neural activity while also considering neural networks involved in observing motorically familiar versus unfamiliar actions.
行为证据表明，对动作的经验会影响对动作的感知。神经镜像被认为是这一行为现象的一种机制。脑电图 (EEG) 中 mu 频带功率的抑制，是运动激活的一个指标，通常反映了神经镜像。然而，在婴儿 EEG 研究中，关于 mu 抑制与运动熟悉度之间的关联存在矛盾的发现。在这项研究中，我们研究了反映熟悉度在动作感知中作用的神经基础。我们测量了 9 至 12 个月大的婴儿对熟悉（抓取）和新颖（工具使用）动作的神经处理。具体来说，我们测量了婴儿的不同运动/视觉活动，并探索了与这些过程相关的功能连接。抓握时的 mu 抑制比工具使用时更强，而两种动作都出现了明显的 mu 和枕部 alpha（视觉活动指标）抑制。有趣的是，在观察熟悉动作时发现了选择性的运动-视觉功能连接，而在观察新颖动作时则没有观察到这种连接。因此，熟悉动作感知的神经相关性可能最好用功能神经网络来理解，而不是孤立的区域活动。我们的研究结果为识别运动特异性神经活动提供了新的见解，同时也考虑了观察运动熟悉和不熟悉动作所涉及的神经网络。
