Citation

Handjaras G, Bernardi G, Benuzzi F, Nichelli PF, Pietrini P, Ricciardi E. Hum. Brain Mapp. 2015; 36(10): 3832-3844.

Affiliation

Laboratory of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Department of Surgery, Medical, Molecular, and Critical Area Pathology, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/hbm.22881

PMID

26138610

Abstract

How the human brain represents distinct motor features into a unique finalized action still remains undefined. Previous models proposed the distinct features of a motor act to be hierarchically organized in separated, but functionally interconnected, cortical areas. Here, we hypothesized that distinct patterns across a wide expanse of cortex may actually subserve a topographically organized coding of different categories of actions that represents, at a higher cognitive level and independently from the distinct motor features, the action and its final aim as a whole. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and pattern classification approaches on the neural responses of 14 right-handed individuals passively watching short movies of hand-performed tool-mediated, transitive, and meaningful intransitive actions, we were able to discriminate with a high accuracy and characterize the category-specific response patterns. Actions are distinctively coded in distributed and overlapping neural responses within an action-selective network, comprising frontal, parietal, lateral occipital and ventrotemporal regions. This functional organization, that we named action topography, subserves a higher-level and more abstract representation of finalized actions and has the capacity to provide unique representations for multiple categories of actions. Hum Brain Mapp, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Language: en