Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Group

The recognition of action is considered to be a fundamental prerequisite for the development of imitation, motor learning and social gesture. In humans the discovery of mirror neurons, which respond to both the observation and execution of an action, have been found suggesting a common coding between perception and action. There are, however, a number of questions not accounted for by the current mirror neuron system interpretation. For example, since the mirror neurons provide a motor representation of action, would these neurons be activated if the action represented implied biological motion, or if the action represented ""impossible biological motion?"" Furthermore, how do the mirror neurons respond to actions that have a strong emotional/social component, i.e. how is an action representing a person running away in fear, compare with a person simply jogging? The goal of this proposal is to investigate these questions in order to better elucidate the fundamental neural basis of action understanding. I will address these questions by measuring brain responses using magnetoencephalography (MEG). With its millisecond temporal resolution, MEG is particularly suited to the analysis of the neural networks underlying action representation. The experiments outlined in this proposal will explore the link between action, perception and intention, in relation to the underlying cortical networks involved in the mirror neuron system and will provide new insights into the nature of perceptual-motor processing.