Neural Simulation of Action: A Unifying Mechanism for Motor Cognition

Abstract

Paradigms drawn from cognitive psychology have provided new insight into covert stages of action. These states include not only intending actions that will eventually be executed, but also imagining actions, recognizing tools, learning by observation, or even understanding the behavior of other people. Studies using techniques for mapping brain activity, probing cortical excitability, or measuring the activity of peripheral effectors in normal human subjects and in patients all provide evidence of a subliminal activation of the motor system during these cognitive states. The hypothesis that the motor system is part of a simulation network that is activated under a variety of conditions in relation to action, either self-intended or observed from other individuals, will be developed. The function of this process of simulation would be not only to shape the motor system in anticipation to execution, but also to provide the self with information on the feasibility and the meaning of potential actions.

Motor imagery of hand actions: Decoding the content of motor imagery from brain activity in frontal and parietal motor areas

“…Regions of interest (ROIs) were selected on the basis of previous findings reported in the MI literature (Ehrsson et al, 2003; Grèzes and Decety, 2001; Heed et al, 2011; Jeannerod, 2001] and defined anatomically on an individual basis using the FreeSurfer parcellation algorithm [Destrieux et al, 2010]. We defined eight ROIs per hemisphere as follows (cf.…”

“…One pioneer in this discussion was Marc Jeannerod [ 2001] who postulated a functional equivalence between imagining and executing an action in his simulation theory. This proposes that every action involves a covert stage, and that this covert state spans the goal of the action, the means to reach it, and its sensory consequences.…”

“…MI is defined as an internal, conscious, and self‐intended rehearsal of movements from a first‐person perspective without any overt physical movement [Crammond, 1997; Decety and Jeannerod, 1996; Hanakawa et al, 2008; Jeannerod, 1994; see Munzert et al, 2009; Vogt et al, 2013, for reviews]. On a neural level, it has been proposed that MI is a simulation that uses the motor system as a substrate [Lange et al, 2006; Jeannerod 2001]. This has been supported by several neuroimaging studies showing that roughly the same brain areas are involved in both motor execution and MI [Decety et al, 1994; Deiber et al, 1996; Hanakawa et al, 2008; Lotze et al, 1999; Porro et al, 1996].…”

Transcranial direct current stimulation of the motor cortex in waking resting state induces motor imagery

“…Studies revealing the strong relationship between motor simulations and motor system activation, functioning independently of motor performance (Abbruzzese et al, 1999, Bonnet et al, 1997, Decety, 1996, Fadiga et al, 1999, Jeannerod, 1995, Jeannerod, 2001, Porro et al, 1996and Schnitzler et al, 1997 have given rise to the hope that motor imagery will provide a backdoor to the motor system after impairments (Jackson et al, 2001, Lehéricy et al, 2004and Sharma et al, 2006. To this end, motor imagery has been shown in neurofeedback task paradigms to increase regional cortical activation: long-term effects of increased activation of motor areas involving neural circuitries associated with motor skill learning can last up to several days (Kober et al, 2014 andYoo et al, 2008).…”

Observing object lifting errors modulates cortico-spinal excitability and improves object lifting performance

“…The overlapping neuronal populations and cortical regions in human and non-human primates has been taken by some as a mechanism for observational learning, by means of implicit neural simulation of the observed action (Calvo-Merino et al, 2005;Jeannerod, 2001). However, the concept of mirror neurons, as typically discussed, offers no insight into how the sensorimotor system reacts to the observation of the commonplace errors that must drive motor learning.…”