Pesci Ugo Giulio, Moreau Quentin, Era Vanessa, Candidi Matteo
Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome 00185, Italy.
IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome 00179, Italy.
eNeuro. 2025 Apr 17;12(4). doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0390-24.2025. Print 2025 Apr.
One pending question in social neuroscience is whether interpersonal interactions are processed differently by the brain depending on the bodily characteristics of the interactor, i.e., their physical appearance. To address this issue, we engaged participants in a minimally interactive task with an avatar either showing bodily features or not while recording their brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) in order to investigate indices of action observation and action monitoring processing. Multivariate results showed that bodily compared with nonbodily appearance modulated parieto-occipital neural patterns throughout the entire duration of the observed movement and that, importantly, such patterns differ from the ones related to initial shape processing. Furthermore, among the electrocortical indices of action monitoring, only the early observational positivity (oPe) was responsive to the bodily appearance of the observed agent under the specific task requirement to predict the partner movement. Taken together, these findings broaden the understanding of how bodily appearance shapes the spatiotemporal processing of an interactor's movements. This holds particular relevance in our modern society, where human-artificial (virtual or robotic) agent interactions are rapidly becoming ubiquitous.
社会神经科学中一个悬而未决的问题是，大脑对人际互动的处理方式是否会因互动者的身体特征，即其外貌而有所不同。为了解决这个问题，我们让参与者参与一项与虚拟化身的最低限度互动任务，该虚拟化身展示或不展示身体特征，同时使用脑电图（EEG）记录他们的大脑活动，以研究动作观察和动作监测处理的指标。多变量结果表明，与无身体外观相比，有身体外观在整个观察到的运动持续时间内调节顶枕神经模式，而且重要的是，这种模式与初始形状处理相关的模式不同。此外，在动作监测的皮层电指标中，在预测伙伴动作的特定任务要求下，只有早期观察性正波（oPe）对被观察主体的身体外观有反应。综上所述，这些发现拓宽了我们对身体外观如何塑造互动者动作的时空处理的理解。这在我们现代社会中具有特别重要的意义，在现代社会中，人类与人工（虚拟或机器人）主体的互动正迅速变得无处不在。
