We combined psychophysical and transcranial magnetic stimulation studies to investigate the dynamics of action anticipation and its underlying neural correlates in professional basketball players. Athletes predicted the success of free shots at a basket earlier and more accurately than did individuals with comparable visual experience (coaches or sports journalists) and novices. Moreover, performance between athletes and the other groups differed before the ball was seen to leave the model's hands, suggesting that athletes predicted the basket shot's fate by reading the body kinematics. Both visuo-motor and visual experts showed a selective increase of motor-evoked potentials during observation of basket shots. However, only athletes showed a time-specific motor activation during observation of erroneous basket throws. Results suggest that achieving excellence in sports may be related to the fine-tuning of specific anticipatory 'resonance' mechanisms that endow elite athletes' brains with the ability to predict others' actions ahead of their realization.

The authors suggest that VRMT may improve memory function in elderly adults by enhancing focused attention.

Although inherently linked, body form and body action may be represented in separate neural substrates. Using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in healthy individuals, we show that interference with the extrastriate body area impairs the discrimination of bodily forms, and interference with the ventral premotor cortex impairs the discrimination of bodily actions. This double dissociation suggests that whereas extrastriate body area mainly processes actors' body identity, premotor cortex is crucial for visual discriminations of actions

The human visual system is highly tuned to perceive actual motion as well as to extrapolate dynamic information from static pictures of objects or creatures captured in the middle of motion. Processing of implied motion activates higher-order visual areas that are also involved in processing biological motion. Imagery and observation of actual movements performed by others engenders selective activation of motor and premotor areas that are part of a mirror-neuron system matching action observation and execution. By using single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation, we found that the mere observation of static snapshots of hands suggesting a pincer grip action induced an increase in corticospinal excitability as compared with observation of resting, relaxed hands, or hands suggesting a completed action. This facilitatory effect was specific for the muscle that would be activated during actual execution of the observed action. We found no changes in responsiveness of the tested muscles during observation of nonbiological entities with (e.g., waterfalls) or without (e.g., icefalls) implied motion. Thus, extrapolation of motion information concerning human actions induced a selective activation of the motor system. This indicates that overlapping motor regions are engaged in the visual analysis of physical and implied body actions. The absence of motor evoked potential modulation during observation of end posture stimuli may indicate that the observationexecution matching system is preferentially activated by implied, ongoing but not yet completed actions.