TY - JOUR
T1 - Primary somatosensory cortex necessary for the perception of weight from other people's action
T2 - A continuous theta-burst TMS experiment
AU - Valchev, Nikola
AU - Tidoni, Emmanuele
AU - Hamilton, Antonia F de C
AU - Gazzola, V.
AU - Avenanti, Alessio
N1 - Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2017/2
Y1 - 2017/2
N2 - The presence of a network of areas in the parietal and premotor cortices, which are active both during action execution and observation, suggests that we might understand the actions of other people by activating those motor programs for making similar actions. Although neurophysiological and imaging studies show an involvement of the somatosensory cortex (SI) during action observation and execution, it is unclear whether SI is essential for understanding the somatosensory aspects of observed actions. To address this issue, we used off-line transcranial magnetic continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) just before a weight judgment task. Participants observed the right hand of an actor lifting a box and estimated its relative weight. In counterbalanced sessions, we delivered sham and active cTBS over the hand region of the left SI and, to test anatomical specificity, over the left motor cortex (M1) and the left superior parietal lobule (SPL). Active cTBS over SI, but not over M1 or SPL, impaired task performance relative to sham cTBS. Moreover, active cTBS delivered over SI just before participants were asked to evaluate the weight of a bouncing ball did not alter performance compared to sham cTBS. These findings indicate that SI is critical for extracting somatosensory features (heavy/light) from observed action kinematics and suggest a prominent role of SI in action understanding.
AB - The presence of a network of areas in the parietal and premotor cortices, which are active both during action execution and observation, suggests that we might understand the actions of other people by activating those motor programs for making similar actions. Although neurophysiological and imaging studies show an involvement of the somatosensory cortex (SI) during action observation and execution, it is unclear whether SI is essential for understanding the somatosensory aspects of observed actions. To address this issue, we used off-line transcranial magnetic continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) just before a weight judgment task. Participants observed the right hand of an actor lifting a box and estimated its relative weight. In counterbalanced sessions, we delivered sham and active cTBS over the hand region of the left SI and, to test anatomical specificity, over the left motor cortex (M1) and the left superior parietal lobule (SPL). Active cTBS over SI, but not over M1 or SPL, impaired task performance relative to sham cTBS. Moreover, active cTBS delivered over SI just before participants were asked to evaluate the weight of a bouncing ball did not alter performance compared to sham cTBS. These findings indicate that SI is critical for extracting somatosensory features (heavy/light) from observed action kinematics and suggest a prominent role of SI in action understanding.
KW - Journal Article
U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.02.075
DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.02.075
M3 - Article
C2 - 28254507
SN - 1053-8119
VL - 152
SP - 195
EP - 206
JO - NeuroImage
JF - NeuroImage
ER -