Beyond action observation: Neurobehavioral mechanisms of memory for visually perceived bodies and actions

Abstract

Examining the processing of others' body-related information in the perceivers' brain (action observation) is a key topic in cognitive neuroscience. However, what happens beyond the perceptual stage, when the body is not within view and it is transformed into an associative form that can be stored, updated, and later recalled, remains poorly understood. Here we examine neurobehavioural evidence on the memory processing of visually perceived bodily stimuli (dynamic actions and images of bodies).The reviewed studies indicate that encoding and maintaining bodily stimuli in memory recruits the sensorimotor system. This process arises when bodily stimuli are either recalled through action recognition or reproduction. Interestingly, the memory capacity for these stimuli is rather limited: only 2 or 3 bodily stimuli can be simultaneously held in memory. Moreover, this process is disrupted by increasing concurrent bodily operations; i.e., moving one's body, seeing or memorising additional bodies. Overall, the evidence suggests that the neural circuitry allowing us to move and feel ourselves supports the encoding, retention, and memory recall of others' visually perceived bodies.

Differences in working memory coding of biological motion attributed to oneself and others

“…Taken together, the identified regions partly overlaps with regions involved in perceptual processing of dot‐motion movement‐stimuli (Lu et al, 2016 ; Sokolov et al, 2018 ) and regions involved in mental simulation of movements, and replicates findings from previous studies (Galvez‐Pol, Forster, & Calvo‐Merino, 2020 ).…”

“…It has been suggested that the amount of overlap is determined by the degree of abstractness in which contents are retained, for example, in a rather sensory format, like imagining the visual appearance of a shape, or in a rather symbolic or language format, like used when rehearsing a telephone number (Christophel et al, 2017 ). Our movement decoding analysis extends this literature, by testing what brain regions exhibit codes for the retention of more complex and more naturalistic material, namely specific movements (Galvez‐Pol, Forster, & Calvo‐Merino, 2020 ). Indeed, the regions revealed by our analysis partly overlap with regions known for perceptual processing of biological motion and action observation (Caspers, Zilles, Laird, & Eickhoff, 2010 ; E. Grossman et al, 2000 ; E. D. Grossman & Blake, 2002 ; Lu et al, 2016 ; Pelphrey, Morris, Michelich, Allison, & McCarthy, 2005 ; Saygin, 2007a ; Saygin, Wilson, Hagler, Bates, & Sereno, 2004 ; Vaina, Solomon, Chowdhury, Sinha, & Belliveau, 2001 ; van Kemenade, Muggleton, Walsh, & Saygin, 2012 ).…”

Revealing the body in the brain: An ERP method to examine sensorimotor activity during visual perception of body-related information

“…However, only few studies have inspected such process beyond the perceptual stage. Namely, when lasting body representations are recalled in the absence of the original percept (a body-related memory; see review in Galvez-Pol et al, 2019). The proposed method allows to assess the fast processing of the percept to-be-remembered from the encoding and retention to its recall (see studies in Table 1).…”

Body image and self-perception in women with navel piercings

“…Future studies investigating ERP markers would also benefit from larger sample sizes than the modest ones employed here and from the delineation of somatosensory ERPs in addition to or in combination with visual ERPs [see e.g. 81,82] to obtain a more comprehensive picture of body-structural and -aesthetic representations at perceptual and cognitive levels in those with body piercings.…”