Sensorimotor expectations bias motor resonance during observation of object lifting: The causal role of pSTS

Autor: Marco Davare, Jean-Jacques Orban de Xivry, Mareike A. Gann, Guy Rens, Alessandro Botta, Vonne van Polanen
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Male
Lifting
medicine.medical_treatment
Pyramidal Tracts
Object (grammar)
Prefrontal Cortex
Observation
Intraparietal sulcus
Kinematics
050105 experimental psychology
Lesion
Young Adult
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Motor system
medicine
Humans
Weight Perception
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Mirror Neurons
Research Articles
Motor resonance
Mirror neuron
Electromyography
General Neuroscience
05 social sciences
Cognition
Anticipation
Psychological

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Temporal Lobe
Biomechanical Phenomena
Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
Transcranial magnetic stimulation
medicine.anatomical_structure
Cortical network
Action observation
Visual Perception
Facilitation
Female
Nerve Net
medicine.symptom
Psychology
Neuroscience
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Zdroj: J Neurosci
DOI: 10.1101/839712
Popis: Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have highlighted that corticospinal excitability (CSE) is increased during observation of object lifting, an effect termed ‘motor resonance’. This facilitation is driven by movement features indicative of object weight, such as object size or observed movement kinematics. Here, we investigated in 35 humans (23 females) how motor resonance is altered when the observer’s weight expectations, based on visual information, do not match the actual object weight as revealed by the observed movement kinematics. Our results highlight that motor resonance is not robustly driven by object weight but easily masked by a suppressive mechanism reflecting the correctness of the weight expectations. Subsequently, we investigated in 24 humans (14 females) whether this suppressive mechanism was driven by higher-order cortical areas. For this, we induced ‘virtual lesions’ to either the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) prior to having participants perform the task. Importantly, virtual lesion of pSTS eradicated this suppressive mechanism and restored object weight-driven motor resonance. In addition, DLPFC virtual lesion eradicated any modulation of motor resonance. This indicates that motor resonance is heavily mediated by top-down inputs from both pSTS and DLPFC. Altogether, these findings shed new light on the theorized cortical network driving motor resonance. That is, our findings highlight that motor resonance is not only driven by the putative human mirror neuron network consisting of the primary motor and premotor cortices as well as the anterior intraparietal sulcus, but also by top-down input from pSTS and DLPFC.Significance StatementObservation of object lifting activates the observer’s motor system in a weight-specific fashion: Corticospinal excitability is larger when observing lifts of heavy objects compared to light ones. Interestingly, here we demonstrate that this weight-driven modulation of corticospinal excitability is easily suppressed by the observer’s expectations about object weight and that this suppression is mediated by the posterior superior temporal sulcus. Thus, our findings show that modulation of corticospinal excitability during observed object lifting is not robust but easily altered by top-down cognitive processes. Finally, our results also indicate how cortical inputs, originating remotely from motor pathways and processing action observation, overlap with bottom-up motor resonance effects.
Databáze: OpenAIRE