Mental representations of action: The neural correlates of the verbal and motor components

Abstract Recent theories have hypothesized that semantic representations of action verbs and mental representations of action may be supported by partially overlapping, distributed brain networks. An fMRI experiment in healthy participants was designed to identify the common and specific regions in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Brain research Vol. 1328; no. 30 Apr; pp. 89 - 103
Main Authors:	Péran, Patrice, Démonet, Jean-François, Cherubini, Andrea, Carbebat, Dominique, Caltagirone, Carlo, Sabatini, Umberto
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Amsterdam Elsevier 30-04-2010
Subjects:	Acoustic Stimulation Adult Anatomical correlates of behavior Behavioral psychophysiology Biological and medical sciences Brain Mapping Cerebral Cortex - anatomy & histology Cerebral Cortex - physiology Executive Function - physiology Female Frontal Lobe - anatomy & histology Frontal Lobe - physiology Functional Laterality - physiology Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Humans Imagination - physiology Language Tests Life Sciences Magnetic Resonance Imaging Male Movement - physiology Nerve Net - anatomy & histology Nerve Net - physiology Neurology Neuropsychological Tests Parietal Lobe - anatomy & histology Parietal Lobe - physiology Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry Psychology. Psychophysiology Psychomotor Performance - physiology Speech Perception - physiology Verbal Behavior - physiology Young Adult Inferior parietal cortex Superior parietal cortex Language Semantics of action Simulation of action Verb Human Action Mental representation Central nervous system Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging Encephalon Semantics Parietal cortex
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Summary:	Abstract Recent theories have hypothesized that semantic representations of action verbs and mental representations of action may be supported by partially overlapping, distributed brain networks. An fMRI experiment in healthy participants was designed to identify the common and specific regions in three different tasks from a common set of object drawings (manipulable man-made objects (MMO) and biological objects (MBO)): the generation of action words (GenA), the mental simulation of action (MSoA) and the mime of an action with the right hand (MimA). A fourth task, object naming (ON), was used as control for input/output effects. A null conjunction identified a common neural network consisting of nine regions distributed over premotor, parietal and occipital cortices. Within this common network, GenA elicited significantly more activation than either ON or MSoA in the left inferior frontal region, while MSoA elicited significantly more activation than either ON or GenA in the left superior parietal lobule. Both MSoA and GenA activated the left inferior parietal lobule more than ON. Furthermore, the left superior parietal cortex was activated to a greater extent by MMO than by MBO regardless of the tasks. These results suggest that action-denoting verbs and motor representations of the same actions activate a common frontal–parietal network. The left inferior parietal cortex and the left superior parietal cortex are likely to be involved in the retrieval of spatial–temporal features of object manipulation; the former might relate to the grasping and manipulation of any object while the latter might be linked to specific object-related gestures.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	0006-8993 1872-6240 0006-8993
DOI:	10.1016/j.brainres.2010.02.082