Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
Recent research reveals humans to mentally simulate actions observed in other people. For instance, perceiving an action triggers a tendency to ‘mimic’ (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999), and activates similar cortical regions as producing that same action (e.g., Buccino et al., 2004). In turn, the premotor cortex has been conceived of as ‘mirror system’, which allows to adapt own actions to a continuously changing environment. However, the psychological mechanisms involved remain open. In our talk, we will highlight the notion of action simulation from a psychological and neuroscience perspective. Second, we aim to explore the mechanisms underlying action simulation. We assume that simulation is (1) a predictive process supported by premotor areas, which furthermore (2) involves semantic action representations. To test our assumptions, participants watched point-light figures performing an action followed by an occluder and a (to be predicted) test posture that was a succession of the action or not. To measure semantic influences, the occluder contained verbs that were congruent or incongruent to the perceived action. If simulation draws on semantic mechanisms, congruent (relative to incongruent) words should facilitate prediction performance. For fMRI-investigations, our paradigm was translated into natural settings. As expected, premotor cortex and posterior perceptual regions appeared as a network for action prediction. The pattern reflects access to the observer’s own motor system when predicting a movement, whereas a memory related task strongly engaged regions for the perception of biological motion. The results will be discussed in the light of disentangling semantic and non-semantic functions in simulating other's behavior.
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