Direction of Biological Motion Affects Early Brain Activation: A Link with Social Cognition

Pegna, Alan John, Gehring, Elise, Meyer, Georg and Del Zotto, Marzia (2015) Direction of Biological Motion Affects Early Brain Activation: A Link with Social Cognition. PLoS One, 10 (6). e0131551.

Other journal.pone.0131551.PDF - Published version Download (1MB)

Abstract

A number of EEG studies have investigated the time course of brain activation for biologicalmovement over this last decade, however the temporal dynamics of processing are stilldebated. Moreover, the role of direction of movement has not received much attention eventhough it is an essential component allowing us to determine the intentions of the movingagent, and thus permitting the anticipation of potential social interactions.In this study, we examined event-related responses (ERPs) in 15 healthy human partici-pants to light point walkers and their scrambled counterparts, whose movements occurredeither in the radial or in the lateral plane. Compared to scrambled motion (SM), biologicalmotion (BM) showed an enhanced negativity between 210 and 360ms. A source localiza-tion algorithm (sLORETA) revealed that this was due to an increase in superior and middletemporal lobe activity. Regarding direction, we found that radial BM produced an enhancedP1 compared to lateral BM, lateral SM and radial SM. This heightened P1 was due to anincrease in activity in extrastriate regions, as well as in superior temporal, medial parietaland medial prefrontal areas. This network is known to be involved in decoding the underly-ing intentionality of the movement and in the attribution of mental states. The social meaningsignaled by the direction of biological motion therefore appears to trigger an early responsein brain activity.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Humans, Brain Mapping, Cognition, Evoked Potentials, Motion, Female, Male, Young Adult
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	09 Aug 2016 10:09
Last Modified:	16 Jan 2024 17:21
DOI:	10.1371/journal.pone.0131551
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3002826