| FUNCTIONAL IMAGING OF MOTOR EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE DURING ACTION OBSERVATION | |
| D.E. Glaser1; J.S. Grezes2; B. Calvo1; R.E. Passingham2*; P. Haggard1 | |
| 1. UCL, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, London, United Kingdom 2. Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, UCL, london, United Kingdom | |
| Many psychophysical and imaging studies
show a close relationship between the perceptual and motor system.
Here, we investigate the role of expertise during action observation.
For this purpose, we have designed an event-related fMRI paradigm with
subjects drawn from populations with expertise in one of two defined
dance styles. Ballet and Capoeira have very specific movements
requiring special training. A 2x2 design was used: two stimulus
conditions (ballet, capoeira) and groups (9 expert ballet dancers, 9
expert capoeira dancers). Subjects viewed brief videos of standard
ballet and capoeira moves, in randomized order, performed by ballet and
capoeira professionals matched for bodily appearance. A ballet
choreographer matched the clips for speed, body part, body location and
movement direction. Faces were blurred to ensure that subjects
processed kinematics, not emotional expressions. Subjects attended to
the movements and rated 'how tiring' they seemed to be so as to ensure
continuous attention to the movies. An event-related random effects
analysis was performed. The effect of expertise was given by the
interaction between stimulus and group. We do not find any activations
in the reverse interaction. Activations in the premotor cortex and IPS
were found (see Calvo B et al, SFN2003). We found additional
activations in the retrosplenial cortex and parahippocampal cortex and
in the orbitofrontal and ventromedial cortex. We take the first
activations to reflect the familiarity of the observers with their
particular discipline and the activation in the medial orbital cortex
to reflect the greater attractiveness of the types of movements in
which they were expert. Support Contributed By: Wellcome Trust, Marie Curie Foundation & the ICN's MRC Co-op grant. |
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