Graduate Institute of Athletics and Coaching Science, National Taiwan Sport University, No. 250, Wenhua 1st Road, Guishan, Taoyuan 33301, Taiwan.
Department of Physical Education, National Taiwan Normal University, No. 162, Sec. 1, Heping E. Road, Taipei 10610, Taiwan.
Cereb Cortex. 2023 Mar 10;33(6):3221-3238. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhac271.
To assess whether the brain processes of action anticipation are modulated differently by perceptual and motor experiences, baseball batters, pitchers, and non-players were asked to predict the fate of pitching actions (strike or ball) while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results showed both batters (perceptual experts of pitching action) and pitchers (motor experts) were more accurate than non-players. Furthermore, batters demonstrated higher perceptual sensitivity in discriminating strikes than non-players. All groups engaged the action observation network, putamen, and cerebellum during anticipation, while pitchers showed higher activity than non-players in the left premotor cortex, which has been implicated in the internal simulation of observed action. Only batters exhibited differences in strike versus ball pitches in their left ventral extrastriate cortex, which might be associated with the processing of relevant visual information conveyed by the observed pitcher's movement kinematics and pitch trajectory. Moreover, all groups showed higher activity selectively in the striatum, thalamus, sensorimotor cortices, and cerebellum during correct predictions than during incorrect ones, with most widespread activation in batters, reinforcing the greater involvement of the sensorimotor system in perceptual experience. Our findings demonstrate that perceptual experience might enhance action anticipation ability to a greater extent than motor experience, with overlapping but specific neural underpinnings.
为了评估动作预期的大脑处理过程是否受到感知和运动经验的不同调节，要求棒球击球手、投球手和非击球手在进行功能磁共振成像时预测投球动作（投球或投球）的命运。结果表明，击球手（投球动作的感知专家）和投球手（运动专家）比非击球手更准确。此外，击球手在区分投球和非击球手的投球时表现出更高的感知敏感性。所有组在预期时都参与了动作观察网络、壳核和小脑，而投球手在左前运动皮层的活动比非击球手更高，这与对观察到的动作的内部模拟有关。只有击球手在他们的左腹侧外纹状体中表现出对投球和投球的差异，这可能与观察到的投手的运动运动学和投球轨迹传达的相关视觉信息的处理有关。此外，所有组在正确预测时比在错误预测时在纹状体、丘脑、感觉运动皮层和小脑选择性地显示出更高的活动，在击球手的激活范围最广，这加强了感觉运动系统在感知经验中的更大参与。我们的研究结果表明，与运动经验相比，感知经验可能会在更大程度上增强动作预期能力，其神经基础既有重叠又有特异性。
