Abstract
Understanding the actions of others is a necessary foundational cornerstone for effective and affective social interactions. Such understanding may result from a mapping of observed actions as well as heard sounds onto one's own motor representations of those events. To examine the electrophysiological basis of action-related sounds, EEG data were collected in two studies from adults who were exposed to auditory events in one of three categories: action (either hand- or mouth-based sounds), non-action (environmental sounds), and control sounds (scrambled versions of action sounds). In both studies, triplets of sounds of the same category were typically presented, although occasionally, to ensure an attentive state, trials containing a sound from a different category were presented within the triplet and participants were asked to respond to this oddball event either covertly in one study or overtly in another. Additionally, participants in both studies were asked to mimic hand- and mouth-based motor actions associated with the sounds (motor task). Action sounds elicited larger EEG mu rhythm (8–13 Hz) suppression, relative to control sounds, primarily over left hemisphere, while non-action sounds showed larger mu suppression primarily over right hemisphere. Furthermore, hand-based sounds elicited greater mu suppression over the hand area in sensorimotor cortex compared to mouth-based sounds. These patterns of mu suppression across cortical regions to different categories of sounds and to effector-specific sounds suggest differential engagement of a mirroring system in the human brain when processing sounds.
Highlights
The discovery of motor neurons in the primate premotor cortex that exhibit visual “mirroring” properties has spurred a significant amount of research into how we understand the actions of others both within and across species having similar biological effectors
While no overall consensus exists as to the role of mirror neurons in social cognition (Hickok, 2009), one prominent hypothesis suggests that the observer’s ability to embody the observed action as his or her own provides a neural scaffolding that facilitates behaviors and cognitive outcomes involved in social cognition, such as understanding actions, imitation, speech and language, theory of mind, social communication, and empathy (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004; Ferrari et al, 2009)
In the monkey premotor cortex, mirror neurons were found to be sensitive to the acoustic correlates of actions, and the corresponding action sound by itself is sufficient to activate these premotor cells (Kohler et al, 2002; Keysers et al, 2003)
Summary
The discovery of motor neurons in the primate premotor cortex that exhibit visual “mirroring” properties has spurred a significant amount of research into how we understand the actions of others both within and across species having similar biological effectors (di Pellegrino et al, 1992; Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004; Iacoboni and Dapretto, 2006) Such visuomotor neurons fire both when a monkey performs a motor action and when it observes another conspecific or human agent perform a similar goal-directed action (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004; Iacoboni and Dapretto, 2006; Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2010). The premotor, posterior parietal and somatosensory cortices of humans show voxels that are active both while performing an action and listening to a similar action (Gazzola et al, 2006), and this activity is somatotopically organized, with more dorsal aspects of the premotor and parietal cortex more active during the www.frontiersin.org
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