Abstract
Since the discovery of mirror neurons in premotor and parietal areas of the macaque monkey, the idea that action and perception may share the same neural code has been of central interest in social, developmental, and cognitive neurosciences. A fundamental question concerns how a putative human mirror neuron system may be tuned to the motor experiences of the individual. The current study tested the hypothesis that prior motor experience modulated the sensorimotor mu and beta rhythms. Specifically, we hypothesized that these sensorimotor rhythms would be more desynchronized after active motor experience compared to passive observation experience. To test our hypothesis, we collected EEG from adult participants during the observation of a relatively novel action: an experimenter used a claw-like tool to pick up a toy. Prior to EEG collection, we trained one group of adults to perform this action with the tool (performers). A second group comprised trained video coders, who only had experience observing the action (observers). Both the performers and the observers had no prior motor and visual experience with the action. A third group of novices was also tested. Performers exhibited the greatest mu rhythm desynchronization in the 8–13 Hz band, particularly in the right hemisphere compared to observers and novices. This study is the first to contrast active tool-use experience and observation experience in the mu rhythm and to show modulation with relatively shorter amounts of experience than prior mirror neuron expertise studies. These findings are discussed with respect to its broader implication as a neural signature for a mechanism of early social learning.
Highlights
In the last decade the idea that action and perception may share the same neural code has been of central interest in social cognitive sciences, as well as in the neurosciences
A fundamental question concerning the development of the human mirror system is whether active experience and/or passive viewing contributes to its plasticity
The findings reported here support the hypothesis that experience performing the tool-use action results in greater mu rhythm desynchronization more than observational experience and no experience during the perception of this action
Summary
In the last decade the idea that action and perception may share the same neural code has been of central interest in social cognitive sciences, as well as in the neurosciences. We tested the hypothesis that active experience, as opposed to observational experience, of performing an action modulates the mu rhythm during perception This question differs from most prior EEG work because in the current context, experience was based on a much shorter time scale than experts who had years of training in their domain. Another difference between the current study and previous studies in expertise is that we examined mirror system activity (via mu and beta rhythm activity) during the learning of a general objectdirected tool-use action. This pattern of desynchronization is not predicted to be robust at other sites across the scalp
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