Premio Sapienza Ricerca 2011

Recent neuroscientific studies indicate that the motor system is not only involved in movement execution but also in higher-order cognitive functions that are crucial for social interactions (e.g. perceiving the actions of other individuals). Our research demonstrates that the motor system is engaged in the predictive simulation of others' motor behaviour and that this simulation is crucial for the discrimination of observed actions. Using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, indeed, we transiently interfered with neural activity of bilateral premotor and exstrastriate visual brain regions and selectively impaired the ability to discriminate others' actions and others' body identity respectively. We showed that the activity of the premotor cortex is found to be essential only for the discrimination of actions that are part of the human repertoire and do not violate biomevhanically possible body kinematics. Moreover, we reported that abstract knowledge about others' motor skills is reflected in the activity of ones' own sensorimotor system. Our research paved the way to lesion studies showing that deficits in recognizing others' identity and actions are associated with selective posterior (visual) and frontal (premotor) brain lesions.