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Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2018) 30 (10): 1442–1451.
Published: 01 October 2018
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The perception of other people is instrumental in guiding social interactions. For example, the appearance of the human body cues a wide range of inferences regarding sex, age, health, and personality, as well as emotional state and intentions, which influence social behavior. To date, most neuroscience research on body perception has aimed to characterize the functional contribution of segregated patches of cortex in the ventral visual stream. In light of the growing prominence of network architectures in neuroscience, the current article reviews neuroimaging studies that measure functional integration between different brain regions during body perception. The review demonstrates that body perception is not restricted to processing in the ventral visual stream but instead reflects a functional alliance between the ventral visual stream and extended neural systems associated with action perception, executive functions, and theory of mind. Overall, these findings demonstrate how body percepts are constructed through interactions in distributed brain networks and underscore that functional segregation and integration should be considered together when formulating neurocognitive theories of body perception. Insight from such an updated model of body perception generalizes to inform the organizational structure of social perception and cognition more generally and also informs disorders of body image, such as anorexia nervosa, which may rely on atypical integration of body-related information.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2018) 30 (6): 914–933.
Published: 01 June 2018
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Humans show an involuntary tendency to copy other people's actions. Although automatic imitation builds rapport and affiliation between individuals, we do not copy actions indiscriminately. Instead, copying behaviors are guided by a selection mechanism, which inhibits some actions and prioritizes others. To date, the neural underpinnings of the inhibition of automatic imitation and differences between the sexes in imitation control are not well understood. Previous studies involved small sample sizes and low statistical power, which produced mixed findings regarding the involvement of domain-general and domain-specific neural architectures. Here, we used data from Experiment 1 ( N = 28) to perform a power analysis to determine the sample size required for Experiment 2 ( N = 50; 80% power). Using independent functional localizers and an analysis pipeline that bolsters sensitivity, during imitation control we show clear engagement of the multiple-demand network (domain-general), but no sensitivity in the theory-of-mind network (domain-specific). Weaker effects were observed with regard to sex differences, suggesting that there are more similarities than differences between the sexes in terms of the neural systems engaged during imitation control. In summary, neurocognitive models of imitation require revision to reflect that the inhibition of imitation relies to a greater extent on a domain-general selection system rather than a domain-specific system that supports social cognition.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2014) 26 (11): 2503–2513.
Published: 01 November 2014
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Humans automatically imitate other people's actions during social interactions, building rapport and social closeness in the process. Although the behavioral consequences and neural correlates of imitation have been studied extensively, little is known about the neural mechanisms that control imitative tendencies. For example, the degree to which an agent is perceived as human-like influences automatic imitation, but it is not known how perception of animacy influences brain circuits that control imitation. In the current fMRI study, we examined how the perception and belief of animacy influence the control of automatic imitation. Using an imitation–inhibition paradigm that involves suppressing the tendency to imitate an observed action, we manipulated both bottom–up (visual input) and top–down (belief) cues to animacy. Results show divergent patterns of behavioral and neural responses. Behavioral analyses show that automatic imitation is equivalent when one or both cues to animacy are present but reduces when both are absent. By contrast, right TPJ showed sensitivity to the presence of both animacy cues. Thus, we demonstrate that right TPJ is biologically tuned to control imitative tendencies when the observed agent both looks like and is believed to be human. The results suggest that right TPJ may be involved in a specialized capacity to control automatic imitation of human agents, rather than a universal process of conflict management, which would be more consistent with generalist theories of imitative control. Evidence for specialized neural circuitry that “controls” imitation offers new insight into developmental disorders that involve atypical processing of social information, such as autism spectrum disorders.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2013) 25 (5): 670–684.
Published: 01 May 2013
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A hallmark of human social interaction is the ability to consider other people's mental states, such as what they see, believe, or desire. Prior neuroimaging research has predominantly investigated the neural mechanisms involved in computing one's own or another person's perspective and largely ignored the question of perspective selection. That is, which brain regions are engaged in the process of selecting between self and other perspectives? To address this question, the current fMRI study used a behavioral paradigm that required participants to select between competing visual perspectives. We provide two main extensions to current knowledge. First, we demonstrate that brain regions within dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal cortices respond in a viewpoint-independent manner during the selection of task-relevant over task-irrelevant perspectives. More specifically, following the computation of two competing visual perspectives, common regions of frontoparietal cortex are engaged to select one's own viewpoint over another's as well as select another's viewpoint over one's own. Second, in the absence of conflict between the content of competing perspectives, we showed a reduced engagement of frontoparietal cortex when judging another's visual perspective relative to one's own. This latter finding provides the first brain-based evidence for the hypothesis that, in some situations, another person's perspective is automatically and effortlessly computed, and thus, less cognitive control is required to select it over one's own perspective. In doing so, we provide stronger evidence for the claim that we not only automatically compute what other people see but also, in some cases, we compute this even before we are explicitly aware of our own perspective.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2011) 23 (11): 3400–3409.
Published: 01 November 2011
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In a social setting, seeing Sally look at a clock means something different to seeing her gaze longingly at a slice of chocolate cake. In both cases, her eyes and face might be turned rightward, but the information conveyed is markedly different, depending on the object of her gaze. Numerous studies have examined brain systems underlying the perception of gaze direction, but less is known about the neural basis of perceiving gaze shifts to specific objects. During fMRI, participants observed an actor look toward one of two objects, each occupying a distinct location. Video stimuli were sequenced to obtain repetition suppression (RS) for object identity, independent of spatial location. In a control condition, a spotlight highlighted one of the objects, but no actor was present. Observation of the human actor's gaze compared with the spotlight engaged frontal, parietal, and temporal cortices, consistent with a broad action observation network. RS for gazed object in the human condition was found in posterior intraparietal sulcus (pIPS). RS for highlighted object in the spotlight condition was found in middle occipital, inferior temporal, medial fusiform gyri, and superior parietal lobule. These results suggest that human pIPS is specifically sensitive to the type object that an observed actor looks at (tool vs. food), irrespective of the observed actor's gaze location (left vs. right). A general attention or lower-level object feature processing mechanism cannot account for the findings because a very different response pattern was seen in the spotlight control condition. Our results suggest that, in addition to spatial orienting, human pIPS has an important role in object-centered social orienting.