Error-related negativity in the skilled brain of pianists reveals motor simulation

2019

Sci Rep

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Previous evidence has shown neuroplastic changes in brain anatomy and connectivity associated with the acquisition of professional visuomotor skills. Reduced hemispherical asymmetry was found in the sensorimotor and visual areas in expert musicians and athletes compared with non-experts. Moreover, increased expertise with faces, body, and objects resulted in an enhanced engagement of the occipito-temporal cortex (OTC) during stimulus observation. The present study aimed at investigating whether intense and extended practice with dance would result in an enhanced symmetric response of OTC at an early stage of action processing. Expert ballet dancers and non-dancer controls were presented with videos depicting ballet steps during EEG recording. The observation of the moving dancer elicited a posterior N2 component, being larger over the left hemisphere in dancers than controls. The source reconstruction (swLORETA) of the negativity showed the engagement of the bilateral inferior and middle temporal regions in experts, while right-lateralized activity was found in controls. The dancers also showed an early P2 and enhanced P300 responses, indicating faster stimulus processing and subsequent recognition. This evidence seemed to suggest expertise-related increased sensitivity of the OTC in encoding body kinematics. Thus, we speculated that long-term whole-body practice would result in enriched and refined action processing.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Bilateral engagement of the occipito-temporal cortex in response to dance kinematics in experts

2019

Sci Rep

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“…The uncus (included in the anterior parahippocampal cortex) is part of the human affective system (Patterson and Schmidt, 2003) and is characterized by strong interhemispheric connections comprising those with the OFC (Frey and Petrides, 2002;Zeidman et al, 2015). The observation of incongruent human body stimuli has been previously linked to the activity of this region (Proverbio et al, 2017;Vocks et al, 2010b). Also, the OFC showed a role in motivation and affective regulation (Arnsten and Rubia, 2012), along with response inhibition, value-based decision making, and flexible associative encoding (Stalnaker et al, 2015;Wallis, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

ERP indices of an orientation-dependent recognition of the human body schema

2020

Neuropsychologia

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“…Both the mPFC and uncus (included in the parahippocampal cortices) are part of the affective system of the human brain [77]. Thus, their engagement may also suggest an affective response [78,79] to target stimuli that were correctly identified. More importantly, the swLORETA showed a selective engagement of the superior/middle temporal (STG/MTG, BA 22) and inferior frontal/precentral gyrus (aka IFJ, BA 6/9) in the left hemisphere.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Left-Hemispheric Asymmetry for Object-Based Attention: an ERP Study

2019

Brain Sciences

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