Boch Magdalena, Karl Sabrina, Wagner Isabella C, Lengersdorff Lukas L, Huber Ludwig, Lamm Claus
Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit, Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Department of Cognitive Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Imaging Neurosci (Camb). 2024 Dec 11;2. doi: 10.1162/imag_a_00385. eCollection 2024.
Action observation is a fundamental pillar of social cognition. Neuroimaging research has revealed a human and non-human primate action observation network (AON) encompassing frontotemporoparietal areas with links to the species' imitation tendencies and relative lobe expansion. Dogs () have good action perception and imitation skills and a less expanded parietal than temporal cortex, but their AON remains unexplored. We conducted a functional MRI study with 28 dogs and 40 humans and found functionally analogous involvement of somatosensory and temporal brain areas of both species' AONs and responses to transitive and intransitive action observation in line with their imitative skills. Employing a functional localizer, we also identified functionally analogous agent-responsive areas within both species' AONs. However, activation and task-based functional connectivity measures suggested significantly less parietal cortex involvement in dogs than in humans. These findings advance our understanding of the neural bases of action understanding and the convergent evolution of social cognition, with analogies and differences resulting from similar social environments and divergent brain expansion, respectively.
动作观察是社会认知的一个基本支柱。神经影像学研究揭示了人类和非人类灵长类动物的动作观察网络（AON），该网络包括额颞顶叶区域，与物种的模仿倾向和相对脑叶扩展有关。狗具有良好的动作感知和模仿技能，其顶叶皮质比颞叶皮质扩张程度小，但其动作观察网络仍未得到探索。我们对28只狗和40名人类进行了一项功能磁共振成像研究，发现两个物种的动作观察网络的体感和颞脑区域在功能上类似地参与其中，并且对及物和不及物动作观察的反应与其模仿技能一致。通过使用功能定位器，我们还在两个物种的动作观察网络中确定了功能类似的主体反应区域。然而，激活和基于任务的功能连接测量表明，狗的顶叶皮质参与程度明显低于人类。这些发现推进了我们对动作理解的神经基础以及社会认知趋同进化的理解，类比和差异分别源于相似的社会环境和不同的脑扩展。
