Cyclic time course of motor excitability modulation during the observation of a cyclic hand movement

Dissociated Representations of Deceptive Intentions and Kinematic Adaptations in the Observer's Motor System

“…However, it is unclear whether such facilitation reflects the mapping of low-level action descriptors, as suggested by the match with the observed or inferred pattern of muscle activation in terms of muscle somatotopy and temporal deployment (Gangitano et al 2001;Borroni et al 2005;Urgesi et al 2006;Valchev et al 2015), or the higher-level aspects such as goals (Cattaneo et al 2009(Cattaneo et al , 2013Cavallo et al 2013) and intentions (Tidoni et al 2013), as suggested by the generalization of effects across muscles (Borroni et al 2008) or effectors (Senna et al 2014;Finisguerra et al 2015). In the present study, we aimed to test whether the modulation of the observer's motor system during observation of deceptive actions (Tidoni et al 2013) reflects the decoding of the actor's intentions or the mapping of the kinematic adaptations required to fool the observer.…”

“…Observing another individual's action triggers motor resonance in the observers' motor/mirror neuron system (MNS, Fadiga et al 2005), which is thought to anticipate the forthcoming action and generate predictions based on kinematics of the observed action (Kilner et al 2004;Borroni et al 2005;Aglioti et al 2008;Urgesi et al 2010). Recently, a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) study showed that, during the observation of deceptive actions, the detection of kinematic cues violating the predicted action enhanced the motor resonance in the observer's brain (Tidoni et al 2013).…”

The multiform motor cortical output: Kinematic, predictive and response coding

“…The aim of this study was to disentangle the relative contribution and combination of different 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 14 person being observed and the observer's ones (Avenanti, Bolognini, Maravita, & Aglioti, 2007;Borroni et al, 2005;Borroni & Baldissera, 2008;Fadiga et al, 1995;Gangitano et al, 2001;Montagna et al, 2005;Strafella & Paus, 2000;Urgesi et al, 2006) and an anticipatory modulation of motor activations according to the final end of the perceived movement. While the video in which the soccer player suddenly stopped after kicking the ball ('still' condition) determined a decrease in CS excitability -signaling a transition to the motor profile designated by the action seen, observing the videos in which the player continued to run extended CS activity until the final phase of the action sequence.…”

The functional role of the parieto-frontal mirror circuit: interpretations and misinterpretations

“…both these assumptions are hard to reconcile with what is known about the organization of the cerebral cortex. Most importantly, TMS studies have shown a clear congruence between the observed motor act and the activated motor representation [32][33][34][35][36] . Thus, if higher-order sensory information describing a motor act reaches motor neurons that encode that same motor act, these motor neurons are mirror neurons by definition.…”

“…The initial evidence for this mechanism was based on TMS experiments which indicated that the observation of the movements of others results in an activation of the muscles involved in the execution of those movements [32][33][34][35][36] . Additional support comes from eeG and MeG studies showing that the observation of movements without a goal desynchronizes the rhythms recorded from motor areas [57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64] .…”