Observing how others lift light or heavy objects: Which visual cues mediate the encoding of muscular force in the primary motor cortex?

Alaerts, Kaat; Swinnen, Stephan P.; Wenderoth, Nicole

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.03.029

Cited by 80 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Thus, we observed that, once the actual weight of the object became known in the deceived condition, the FDI muscle was involved in adjusting the lifting of the object according to its actual weight. In particular, in the central and last phases of truthful lifting, the FDI muscle was more activated for the heavy than for the light object (third bin: P = 0.023; fourth bin: P < 0.001; fifth bin: P < 0.001), in keeping with the sensitivity of the hand muscles to object weight (Alaerts et al 2010a(Alaerts et al , 2010bSenot et al 2011;Tidoni et al 2013). Importantly, this weight-sensitivity was reflected into a reduced activation of the FDI while the actors were lifting an object that was expected to be lighter than its actual weight as compared to when they received truthful information.…”

Section: Emg Data During Action Executionmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…These 2 muscles were selected for their motor role during reaching-tograsp and lifting movements and sensitivity to genuine versus deceptive intentions during action observation. Indeed, the FDI muscle activity is directly involved in controlling the strength of the grip during lifting (Alaerts et al 2010a(Alaerts et al , 2010bSenot et al 2011). More importantly, the FDI CSE is more facilitated during the observation of fooling than genuine hand actions exerted upon objects of the same weight (Tidoni et al 2013).…”

Section: Tms and Electromyographymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More importantly, the FDI CSE is more facilitated during the observation of fooling than genuine hand actions exerted upon objects of the same weight (Tidoni et al 2013). As well, not only is the ECR muscle activity involved in lifting action execution, but the ECR CSE is highly sensitive to changes in the kinematic pattern and exerted force during action observation (Alaerts et al 2010a(Alaerts et al , 2010b. However, there is no evidence about the ECR involvement in deceptive behaviors (see electromyography, EMG, recording during action execution).…”

Section: Tms and Electromyographymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2016

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Previous studies showed that observing deceptive actions modulates the activity of the observer's motor system. However, it is unclear whether this modulation reflects the coding of deceptive intentions or the mapping of the kinematic adaptations required to attain deceptive actions. Here, we used single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to measure cortico-spinal excitability (CSE) from hand and forearm muscles while participants predicted the weight of cubes lifted by actors who received truthful information on the object weight and provided 1) truthful (truthful actions) or 2) deceptive (deceptive actions) cues to the observers or 3) who received fooling information and were asked to provide truthful cues (deceived actions). This way, we independently manipulated actor's intentions and kinematic adaptations. We found that, as compared to truthful action observation, CSE increased during observation of deceptive actions, but decreased during observation of deceived actions. Importantly, while the CSE enhancement in response to deceptive intentions lacked muscle specificity, perceiving kinematic alterations in the deceived condition affected CSE only for the hand muscle involved in kinematic adaptations to unexpected object weight. This suggests that actor's intentions and movement kinematics may be coded by the observer's motor system at different hierarchical levels of action representation.

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Section: Emg Data During Action Executionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Section: Tms and Electromyographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tms and Electromyographymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2016

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“…For example, observing a video of an actor lifting an object increases the excitability of the representation of muscles involved in lifting in motor cortex, and this increases scales with the required force (i.e. object weight) [24,39].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of observers' gaze behaviour when watching object manipulation tasks: predicting and evaluating the consequences of action

Flanagan

Rotman

Reichelt

et al. 2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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When watching an actor manipulate objects, observers, like the actor, naturally direct their gaze to each object as the hand approaches and typically maintain gaze on the object until the hand departs. Here, we probed the function of observers' eye movements, focusing on two possibilities: (i) that observers' gaze behaviour arises from processes involved in the prediction of the target object of the actor's reaching movement and (ii) that this gaze behaviour supports the evaluation of mechanical events that arise from interactions between the actor's hand and objects. Observers watched an actor reach for and lift one of two presented objects. The observers' task was either to predict the target object or judge its weight. Proactive gaze behaviour, similar to that seen in self-guided action–observation, was seen in the weight judgement task, which requires evaluating mechanical events associated with lifting, but not in the target prediction task. We submit that an important function of gaze behaviour in self-guided action observation is the evaluation of mechanical events associated with interactions between the hand and object. By comparing predicted and actual mechanical events, observers, like actors, can gain knowledge about the world, including information about objects they may subsequently act upon.

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“…In terms of human-human interaction (HHI), humans demonstrate a remarkable ability to interpret the actions and intentions of others in a seemingly effortless way [7]. For instance, when you see somebody stretching out his hand toward a cup, you do not just see a hand movement trajectory, but you also infer the goal of reaching that cup, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Imitation of Goal Directed Movements of a Humanoid Robot

Bao

Cuijpers

2017

Int J of Soc Robotics

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Interacting with a social robot should give people a better understanding of the robot's actions and intentions. In terms of human-human interaction (HHI), people can interpret actions of others in an effortless way. However, it is still unclear whether people can do the same with humanoid robots. Imitation (of the robot's actions) provides us with an intuitive means for solving this puzzle, because it is closely related to interpreting another's actions. In the study of human imitation, the theory of goal-directed imitation holds that the imitator tends to imitate the action goals whenever the action goals are salient, otherwise people tend to imitate the action means. We investigated this theory for human robot interaction by manipulating the presence and absence of the goal object when people imitate the robot's pointing gestures. The results showed that the presence of a goal object reduces people's goal errors. Moreover, we found that most people tend to match their action means rather than the goals of the robot's action. To ensure that participants considered the robot as a social agent, we designed a natural interaction task where the turn-taking cue was included: we let the robot look at the human after completing the pointing gesture at varying latencies. As expected, we found that the earlier the robot gazes at people, the shorter the reaction time of people was to start to imitate. Our results show that people are responsive to a robot's social gaze cues, and that they are responsive to the action goals of robots, although not as much as in HHI.

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Observing how others lift light or heavy objects: Which visual cues mediate the encoding of muscular force in the primary motor cortex?

Cited by 80 publications

References 63 publications

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

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

The role of observers' gaze behaviour when watching object manipulation tasks: predicting and evaluating the consequences of action

On the Imitation of Goal Directed Movements of a Humanoid Robot

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