Action Understanding in the Superior Temporal Sulcus Region

Abstract

The posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) region plays an important role in the perception of social acts, although its full role has not been completely clarified. This functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment examined activity in the STS region as participants viewed actions that were congruent or incongruent with intentions established by a previous emotional context. Participants viewed an actress express either a positive or a negative emotion toward one of two objects and then subsequently pick up one of them. If the object that was picked up had received positive regard, or if the object that was not picked up had received negative regard, the action was congruent; otherwise, the action was incongruent. Activity in the right posterior STS region was sensitive to the congruency between the action and the actress’s emotional expression (i.e., STS activity was greater on incongruent than on congruent trials). These findings suggest that the posterior STS represents not only biological motion, but also how another person’s motion is related to his or her intentions.

Neural correlates of prosocial behavior in infancy: Different neurophysiological mechanisms support the emergence of helping and comforting

“…Second, topographic maps have shown that this activation is focused on central (sensorimotor) areas rather than lateral, temporal sites (e.g., Marshall and Meltzoff, 2011;Paulus et al, 2012a). Although we therefore suggest that our temporal activation asymmetry is not related to mu-desychronization and action mirroring in the motor system, the relation between the right temporal areas and people's ability to understand others' actions (Reid et al, 2005;van der Cruyssen et al, 2009;Vander Wyk et al, 2009) may suggest a role of action understanding in competent instrumental helping.…”

“…Recent findings suggested a relation between the right temporal areas and people's ability to understand others' actions (van der Cruyssen et al, 2009;Vander Wyk et al, 2009; see also Reid et al, 2005). Our results could therefore suggest that infants' growing ability for action understanding plays a dominant role in the development of instrumental helping behavior.…”

“…Although these findings have been restricted to research with adults and therefore their application to infant research should be taken with care, we decided to include temporal sites in our study. Moreover, including temporal sites in the analysis is also interesting as recent findings suggest that right temporal areas might be involved in action understanding (e.g., van der Cruyssen et al, 2009;Vander Wyk et al, 2009). For example, Vander Wyk et al (2009 reported evidence that activity in the right superior temporal sulcus (STS) is indicative for the congruency between an action and the previous expression of an actor's intention, indicating a role of the right temporal lobe in perception of others' actions.…”

Autism, social cognition and superior temporal sulcus

“…In that study, which used a functional MRI (fMRI) paradigm with typically developing subjects, a strong effect of context was observed in the right posterior STS region: observation of gaze shifting away from a target (incongruent shifts) evoked a haemodynamic response with extended duration and greater amplitude compared to gaze shifting towards the target (congruent shifts). In a similar study from the same group, also performed in typically developing subjects, STS presented a greater response when participants viewed a reaching gesture incongruent with a prior emotional expression than when they viewed a reaching gesture congruent with the prior expression, regardless of whether expectations were induced by a positive or a negative emotional expression [45]. Consistent with prior studies in adults, the STS, middle temporal gyrus, and inferior parietal lobule were sensitive to the intentions underlying the stimulus character's eye movements.…”

“…In addition, studies have demonstrated that STS responds not only to biological movement itself but also to specific aspects of social gestures, including "the intentionality and appropriateness of biological motion" [4,44,45]. Indeed, STS activation has been reported in response to possible versus impossible human movements [46] and meaningful versus non-meaningful hand motions [47], as well as to the intentionality of other observed human actions including reaching-to-grasp movements of the arm and hand [48].…”