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Beyond Motor Scheme: A Supramodal Distributed Representation in the Action-Observation Network

The representation of actions within the action-observation network is thought to rely on a distributed functional organization. Furthermore, recent findings indicate that the action-observation network encodes not merely the observed motor act, but rather a representation that is independent from a...

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Autores principales: Ricciardi, Emiliano, Handjaras, Giacomo, Bonino, Daniela, Vecchi, Tomaso, Fadiga, Luciano, Pietrini, Pietro
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3589380/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23472216
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058632
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author Ricciardi, Emiliano
Handjaras, Giacomo
Bonino, Daniela
Vecchi, Tomaso
Fadiga, Luciano
Pietrini, Pietro
author_facet Ricciardi, Emiliano
Handjaras, Giacomo
Bonino, Daniela
Vecchi, Tomaso
Fadiga, Luciano
Pietrini, Pietro
author_sort Ricciardi, Emiliano
collection PubMed
description The representation of actions within the action-observation network is thought to rely on a distributed functional organization. Furthermore, recent findings indicate that the action-observation network encodes not merely the observed motor act, but rather a representation that is independent from a specific sensory modality or sensory experience. In the present study, we wished to determine to what extent this distributed and ‘more abstract’ representation of action is truly supramodal, i.e. shares a common coding across sensory modalities. To this aim, a pattern recognition approach was employed to analyze neural responses in sighted and congenitally blind subjects during visual and/or auditory presentation of hand-made actions. Multivoxel pattern analyses-based classifiers discriminated action from non-action stimuli across sensory conditions (visual and auditory) and experimental groups (blind and sighted). Moreover, these classifiers labeled as ‘action’ the pattern of neural responses evoked during actual motor execution. Interestingly, discriminative information for the action/non action classification was located in a bilateral, but left-prevalent, network that strongly overlaps with brain regions known to form the action-observation network and the human mirror system. The ability to identify action features with a multivoxel pattern analyses-based classifier in both sighted and blind individuals and independently from the sensory modality conveying the stimuli clearly supports the hypothesis of a supramodal, distributed functional representation of actions, mainly within the action-observation network.
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spelling pubmed-35893802013-03-07 Beyond Motor Scheme: A Supramodal Distributed Representation in the Action-Observation Network Ricciardi, Emiliano Handjaras, Giacomo Bonino, Daniela Vecchi, Tomaso Fadiga, Luciano Pietrini, Pietro PLoS One Research Article The representation of actions within the action-observation network is thought to rely on a distributed functional organization. Furthermore, recent findings indicate that the action-observation network encodes not merely the observed motor act, but rather a representation that is independent from a specific sensory modality or sensory experience. In the present study, we wished to determine to what extent this distributed and ‘more abstract’ representation of action is truly supramodal, i.e. shares a common coding across sensory modalities. To this aim, a pattern recognition approach was employed to analyze neural responses in sighted and congenitally blind subjects during visual and/or auditory presentation of hand-made actions. Multivoxel pattern analyses-based classifiers discriminated action from non-action stimuli across sensory conditions (visual and auditory) and experimental groups (blind and sighted). Moreover, these classifiers labeled as ‘action’ the pattern of neural responses evoked during actual motor execution. Interestingly, discriminative information for the action/non action classification was located in a bilateral, but left-prevalent, network that strongly overlaps with brain regions known to form the action-observation network and the human mirror system. The ability to identify action features with a multivoxel pattern analyses-based classifier in both sighted and blind individuals and independently from the sensory modality conveying the stimuli clearly supports the hypothesis of a supramodal, distributed functional representation of actions, mainly within the action-observation network. Public Library of Science 2013-03-05 /pmc/articles/PMC3589380/ /pubmed/23472216 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058632 Text en © 2013 Ricciardi et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ricciardi, Emiliano
Handjaras, Giacomo
Bonino, Daniela
Vecchi, Tomaso
Fadiga, Luciano
Pietrini, Pietro
Beyond Motor Scheme: A Supramodal Distributed Representation in the Action-Observation Network
title Beyond Motor Scheme: A Supramodal Distributed Representation in the Action-Observation Network
title_full Beyond Motor Scheme: A Supramodal Distributed Representation in the Action-Observation Network
title_fullStr Beyond Motor Scheme: A Supramodal Distributed Representation in the Action-Observation Network
title_full_unstemmed Beyond Motor Scheme: A Supramodal Distributed Representation in the Action-Observation Network
title_short Beyond Motor Scheme: A Supramodal Distributed Representation in the Action-Observation Network
title_sort beyond motor scheme: a supramodal distributed representation in the action-observation network
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3589380/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23472216
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058632
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