A selective representation of the meaning of actions in the auditory mirror system

作     者：Galati, Gaspare Committeri, Giorgia Spitoni, Grazia Aprile, Teresa Di Russo, Francesco Pitzalis, Sabrina Pizzamiglio, Luigi 

作者机构：Univ G dAnnunzio Dept Clin Sci & Bioimaging Neuropsychol Lab I-66013 Chieti Italy Univ G Annunzio Fdn I-66013 Chieti Italy IRCCS Santa Lucia Fdn Neuroimaging Lab I-00179 Rome Italy Sapienza Univ Dept Psychol I-00185 Rome Italy IRCCS Fdn Santa Lucia Neuropsychol Lab I-00179 Rome Italy Univ Inst Motor Sci Dept Educ Motor Activ & Sport I-00194 Rome Italy 

出 版 物：《NEUROIMAGE》 (神经图像)

年 卷 期：2008年第40卷第3期

页      面：1274-1286页

核心收录：

学科分类：1002[医学-临床医学] 1001[医学-基础医学(可授医学、理学学位)] 1010[医学-医学技术（可授医学、理学学位）] 1009[医学-特种医学] 10[医学] 

基　　金：Neuroimaging Laboratory at Santa Lucia Foundation Ministero della Salute 

主　　题：Acoustic Stimulation Adult Auditory Perception/physiology Cues Discrimination (Psychology) Echo-Planar Imaging Female Functional Laterality/physiology Hand/physiology Humans Image Processing, Computer-Assisted Male Motor Cortex/physiology Mouth/physiology Movement/physiology Psychomotor Performance/physiology 

摘      要：Mirror neurons in the monkey s premotor cortex respond during both execution and observation of actions and are thought to be critical for understanding others actions. Human studies have shown premotor cortex activation while viewing actions, hearing their sounds, listening to or reading action-related sentences, and have compared execution and observation of similar actions. However, we still lack direct evidence in humans of the most striking and theoretically relevant feature of mirror neurons, i.e., that they map seen/heard actions onto motor representations of the same actions at an abstract level. Here we combine fast event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging with an unconscious semantic priming paradigm and show that the human auditory mirror system also holds an abstract representation of the meaning of heard actions. We analyzed the effect on brain activity of trial-by-trial semantic congruency between a target sound denoting a hand or mouth action ( or an environmental event) and a briefly flashed written word acting as an unconscious cross-modal prime. Left inferior frontal and posterior temporal regions selectively responded to action sounds in a non-somatotopic fashion and were modulated by semantic congruency only in action sound trials. We also observed regions selective for either hand or mouth actions, which however did not show a corresponding effector-specific effect of semantic congruency. These results provide evidence that the human mirror system represents the meaning of actions ( but not of other events) ( a) at an abstract, semantic level, (b) independently of the effector, and ( c) independently of conscious awareness. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.