Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on December 22, 2004
Cerebral Cortex 2005 15(8):1243-1249; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhi007
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© Oxford University Press 2005; all rights reserved
Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: An fMRI Study with Expert Dancers
1 Institute of Movement Neuroscience, University College London and Department of Basic Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain, 2 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK, 3 Laboratoire de Physiologie de la Perception et de l'Action, Centre National de la Reserche Scientifique-College de France, Paris, France and 4 Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology and Functional Imaging Laboratory, Institute of Neurology, University College London and Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Address correspondence to Patrick Haggard, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK. Email: p.haggard{at}ucl.ac.uk.
When we observe someone performing an action, do our brains simulate making that action? Acquired motor skills offer a unique way to test this question, since people differ widely in the actions they have learned to perform. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study differences in brain activity between watching an action that one has learned to do and an action that one has not, in order to assess whether the brain processes of action observation are modulated by the expertise and motor repertoire of the observer. Experts in classical ballet, experts in capoeira and inexpert control subjects viewed videos of ballet or capoeira actions. Comparing the brain activity when dancers watched their own dance style versus the other style therefore reveals the influence of motor expertise on action observation. We found greater bilateral activations in premotor cortex and intraparietal sulcus, right superior parietal lobe and left posterior superior temporal sulcus when expert dancers viewed movements that they had been trained to perform compared to movements they had not. Our results show that this ‘mirror system’ integrates observed actions of others with an individual's personal motor repertoire, and suggest that the human brain understands actions by motor simulation.
Key Words: biological motion • expertise • intraparietal • mirror neurons • motor repertoire • premotor cortex
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