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Focusing on body sites: the role of spatial attention in action perception

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Abstract

Humans use the same representations to code self-produced and observed actions. Neurophysiological evidence for this view comes from the discovery of the so-called mirror neurons in premotor cortex of the macaque monkey. These neurons respond when the monkey performs a particular action but also when it observes the same behavior in another individual. In humans, such direct links between perception and action seem to mediate action priming, where a response is facilitated when a similar action is observed. An issue that has not been fully resolved concerns the role of selective attention in these processes. Action priming appears to be an automatic process in the sense that the observed action can be irrelevant to the observer’s task and nevertheless prime similar responses. However, it is not known whether attention has to be oriented to the action for these processes to be engaged. It is demonstrated here that spatial attention indeed has to be oriented to the action related body site for action priming to take place. Furthermore, if attention is oriented to the appropriate body site, there need be no visual cues to action for action priming to emerge.

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Notes

  1. Please note that our paradigm does not allow us to differentiate between facilitation and interference accounts of the effect. The reason is that the ‘head’ condition is not an appropriate baseline condition. In the ‘limb’ condition, the colored targets could appear on either the feet or on the hands of the actor. In the ‘head’ condition, however, the colored targets always appeared on the actor’s head. Thus, for any given trial, the probability for a target to appear on the head is 50%, whereas it is 25% for either of the limbs (feet or hand). This should speed up detection times of the targets in the ‘head’ condition. face, which might have speeded up detection times of the colored targets.

  2. The extrastriate body area (EBA) described by Downing et al. (2001) (Urgesi et al. 2004) also codes bodies and body parts, even in the absence of action perception. However, it does not seem to have a motor role (Peelen and Downing 2005), which makes its role in automatic imitation doubtful.

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Acknowledgments

The work was supported by a Wellcome Trust Progamme grant awarded to SPT.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2AS, UK

    Patric Bach, Nicholas A. Peatfield & Steven P. Tipper

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  1. Patric Bach
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  2. Nicholas A. Peatfield
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  3. Steven P. Tipper
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Correspondence to Patric Bach.

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Bach, P., Peatfield, N.A. & Tipper, S.P. Focusing on body sites: the role of spatial attention in action perception. Exp Brain Res 178, 509–517 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-006-0756-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-006-0756-4

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