The involvement of mirror neuron system in visual perspective taking during action memory encoding

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event The involvement of mirror neuron system in visual perspective taking during action memory encoding Yan FU1 and Liz Franz1* 1 University of Otago, Department of Psychology, New Zealand Cognitive operations involved in perceiving a visual scene from one’s own perspective (direct perspective) differ from those used when viewing the same scene from another person’s perspective (translated perspective).The present study investigated the neural mechanisms underlying visual perspective-taking during action memory encoding and retrieval for two different types of action cues: those for action goals and for action means. A novel action observation task was employed, which involved two visual perspectives (direct perspective vs translated perspective), two levels of action cues (action goal vs action means) and two retention intervals (short vs long). Participants were presented real-time action clips depicting hand reaching actions presented from two different visual perspectives (direct and translated) while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded for later analysis of event related potentials (ERPs) and event related spectral perturbations (ERSP). A key question was whether frontal activation, particularly in known mirror neuron areas, would occur during very early memory encoding associated with observation of actions. Supporting our hypothesis, ERP results showed a pronounced effect of visual perspective in frontal areas during action observation, with more negative ERPs in the translated perspective compared with the direct perspective. Further source localization analysis revealed clear localization of the perspective related cluster in the right Inferior Frontal Gyrus during the encoding stage. Time-frequency analysis further indicated stronger mu suppression (in 8-13Hz and 13-20Hz bands) in the direct perspective compared to the translated perspective in sensory-motor areas. Together these findings suggest that the mirror neuron system plays an important role in processes related to visual perspective taking during memory encoding associated with observing actions. Keywords: visual perspective, action memory, mirror neuron system, mu rhythm suppression, EEG/ERP Conference: ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia, 28 Nov - 1 Dec, 2013. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Memory Citation: FU Y and Franz L (2013). The involvement of mirror neuron system in visual perspective taking during action memory encoding. Conference Abstract: ACNS-2013 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2013.212.00111 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 09 Sep 2013; Published Online: 25 Nov 2013. * Correspondence: Prof. Liz Franz, University of Otago, Department of Psychology, Dunedin, New Zealand, Lfranz@psy.otago.ac.nz Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Yan FU Liz Franz Google Yan FU Liz Franz Google Scholar Yan FU Liz Franz PubMed Yan FU Liz Franz Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.