170,084 research outputs found
Somatosensory cortex in action observation, a combined fMRI and cTBS study
No full textThe action observation-execution network (AOEN; Caspers et al., 2010; Molenberghs et al., 2012) includes premotor and parietal areas activated by both action execution and observation. Keysers et al. (2010) suggested the primary somatosensory area (SI) also participates in the AOEN, by simulating the somatosensory consequences of the observed action, a prediction supported by the fact that interfering with SI activation impairs action observation (Valchev et al., submitted). We examined, whether SI and the parieto-frontal AOEN are in fact a single, causally interconnected sensorimotor network, or two independent networks processing observed actions separately. To this aim, we combined continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) with fMRI to perturb SI and measure the effects on the rest of the AOEN.
Results show that cTBS-induced changes in SI predicted changes in premotor Obs activation and cTBS stimulation over SI seems to have a distal causal effect on premotor and parietal regions of the AOEN. Using acombination of cTBS and fMRI we show that SI is an active component of the AOEN that has causal effects on premotor regions classically associated with the mirror neuron system as measured in monkey (Gallese et al., 1996)
The straw man in the brain [Review of: G. Hickok (2014) The myth of mirror neurons: the real neuroscience of communication and cognition]
No full textPop culture claims about the brain make for easy targets, finds Christian Keysers
The mirror neuron system: New frontiers
No full textSince the discovery of mirror neurons, much effort has been invested into Studying their location and properties in the human brain. Here we review these original findings and introduce the Main topics of this special issue of Social Neuroscience. What does the mirror system code? How is the mirror system embedded into the mosaic of circuits that compose out brain? How does the mirror system contribute to communication, language and social interaction? Call the principle of mirror neuron,, be extended to emotions, sensations and thoughts? Papers using a wide range of methods, including single cell recordings, fMRI, TMS, EEG and psychophysics, collected in this special issue, start to give us some impressive answers
Emotional Mirrors in the Rat’s Anterior Cingulate Cortex. Carrillo et al.
No full textHow do the emotions of others affect us? The human anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) responds while experiencing pain in the self and witnessing pain in others, but the underlying cellular mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here we show the rat ACC (area 24) contains neurons responding when a rat experiences pain as triggered by a laser and while witnessing another rat receive footshocks. Most of these neurons do not respond to a fear conditioned tone (CS). Deactivating this region reduces freezing while witnessing footshocks to others but not while hearing the CS. A decoder trained on spike counts while witnessing footshocks to another rat can decode stimulus intensity both while witnessing pain in another and while experiencing the pain first-hand. Mirror-like neurons thus exist in the ACC that encode the pain of others in a code shared with first-hand pain experience. A smaller population of neurons responded to witnessing footshocks to others and while hearing the CS but not while experiencing laser triggered pain. These differential responses suggest that the ACC may contain channels that map the distress of another animal onto a mosaic of pain and fear sensitive channels in the observer. More experiments are necessary to determine whether painfulness and fearfulness in particular or differences in arousal or salience are responsible for these differential responses The data is organized based by the figures included in the paper, one folder per figure. Each figure contains a text file that explains in detail the organization of the data files and matlab scripts where applicable. Figure 2 -->
A unifying view of the basis of social cognition
No full textIn this article we provide a unifying neural hypothesis on how individuals understand the actions and emotions of others. Our main claim is that the fundamental mechanism at the basis of the experiential understanding of others' actions is the activation of the mirror neuron system. A similar mechanism, but involving the activation of viscero-motor centers, underlies the experiential understanding of the emotions of others
Transformation invariance in hand shape recognition
No full textIn hand shape recognition, transformation invariance is key for successful recognition. We propose a system that is invariant to small scale, translation and shape variations. This is achieved by using a-priori knowledge to create a transformation subspace for each hand shape. Transformation subspaces are created by performing principal component analysis (PCA) on images produced using computer animation. A method to increase the efficiency of the system is outlined. This is achieved using a technique of grouping subspaces based on their origin and then organising them into a hierarchical decision tree. We compare the accuracy of this technique with that of the tangent distance technique and display the result
The anthropomorphic brain: the mirror neuron system responds to human and robotic actions.
No full textGoing Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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