Abstract
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a neuroimaging technique that has undergone tremendous growth over the last decade due to methodological advantages over other measures of brain activation. The action-observation network (AON), a system of brain structures proposed to have “mirroring” abilities (e.g., active when an individual completes an action or when they observe another complete that action), has been studied in humans through neural measures such as fMRI and electroencephalogram (EEG); however, limitations of these methods are problematic for AON paradigms. For this reason, fNIRS is proposed as a solution to investigating the AON in humans. The present review article briefly summarizes previous neural findings in the AON and examines the state of AON research using fNIRS in adults. A total of 14 fNIRS articles are discussed, paying particular attention to methodological choices and considerations while summarizing the general findings to aid in developing better protocols to study the AON through fNIRS. Additionally, future directions of this work are discussed, specifically in relation to researching AON development and potential multimodal imaging applications.
Highlights
Interactions in everyday life require us to continuously encode the actions and intentions of others
Establishing a pattern of activation for each condition separately allows researchers to ensure that the proper neural response is elicited during each condition, and determine which areas may overlap across these conditions to form the action-observation network (AON)
The execution of action appears to result in bilateral premotor activation, an area implicated in action planning and does not appear to be consistently active during observation conditions (Holper et al, 2010), indicating that this may not be part of the AON
Summary
Interactions in everyday life require us to continuously encode the actions and intentions of others. (3) used fNIRS to measure hemodynamic activity in the brain; and (4) contained and analyzed both an execute and observe condition in the AON paradigm.
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