 |
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
The Journal of Neuroscience, December 20, 2006, 26(51):13194-13201; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3914-06.2006
Previous Article | Next Article
Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Modulation of Neural Activity during Observational Learning of Actions and Their Sequential Orders
Scott H. Frey andValerie E. Gerry Lewis Center for Neuroimaging and Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1227
Correspondence should be addressed to Scott H. Frey, Lewis Center for Neuroimaging and Department of Psychology, 1227 Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1227. Email: shfrey{at}uoregon.edu
How does the brain transform perceptual representations of others' actions into motor representations that can be used to guide behavior? Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to record human brain activity while subjects watched others construct multipart objects under varied task demands. We find that relative to resting baseline, passive action observation increases activity within inferior frontal and parietal cortices implicated in action encoding (mirror system) and throughout a distributed network of areas involved in motor representation, including dorsal premotor cortex, pre-supplementary motor area, cerebellum, and basal ganglia (experiments 1 and 2). Relative to passive observation, these same areas show increased activity when subjects observe with the intention to subsequently reproduce component actions using the demonstrated sequential procedures (experiment 1). Observing the same actions with the intention of reproducing component actions, but without the requirement to use the demonstrated sequential procedure, increases activity in the same regions, although to a lesser degree (experiment 2). These findings demonstrate that when attempting to learn behaviors through observation, the observers' intentions modulate responses in a widely distributed network of cortical and subcortical regions implicated previously in action encoding and/or motor representation. Among these regions, only activity within the right intraparietal sulcus predicts the accuracy with which observed procedures are subsequently performed. Successful formation of motor representations of sequential procedures through observational learning is dependent on computations implemented within this parietal region.
Key words: observational learning; sequence representation; fMRI; intraparietal sulcus; mirror system; rehabilitation
Received June 29, 2006; revised Nov. 6, 2006; accepted Nov. 7, 2006.
Correspondence should be addressed to Scott H. Frey, Lewis Center for Neuroimaging and Department of Psychology, 1227 Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1227. Email: shfrey{at}uoregon.edu
This article has been cited by other articles:
A. A. Sokolov, A. Gharabaghi, M. S. Tatagiba, and M. Pavlova
Cerebellar Engagement in an Action Observation Network
Cereb Cortex, June 22, 2009; (2009) bhp117v1.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
E. S. Cross, D. J.M. Kraemer, A. F. d. C. Hamilton, W. M. Kelley, and S. T. Grafton
Sensitivity of the Action Observation Network to Physical and Observational Learning
Cereb Cortex, February 1, 2009; 19(2): 315 - 326.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
S. H Frey
Tool use, communicative gesture and cerebral asymmetries in the modern human brain
Phil Trans R Soc B, June 12, 2008; 363(1499): 1951 - 1957.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
R. M. Willems
The Neural Construction of a Tinkertoy
J. Neurosci., February 14, 2007; 27(7): 1509 - 1510.
[Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|