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- Title
When Sounds Become Actions: Higher-order Representation of Newly Learned Action Sounds in the Human Motor System.
- Authors
Ticini, Luca F.; Schütz-Bosbach, Simone; Weiss, Carmen; Casile, Antonino; Waszak, Florian
- Abstract
In the absence of visual information, our brain is able to recognize the actions of others by representing their sounds as a motor event. Previous studies have provided evidence for a somatotopic activation of the listener's motor cortex during perception of the sound of highly familiar motor acts. The present experiments studied (a) how the motor system is activated by action-related sounds that are newly acquired and (b) whether these sounds are represented with reference to extrinsic features related to action goals rather than with respect to lower-level intrinsic parameters related to the specific movements. TMS was used to measure the correspondence between auditory and motor codes in the listener's motor system. We compared the cortico-motor excitability in response to the presentation of auditory stimuli void of previous motor meaning before and after a short training period in which these stimuli were associated with voluntary actions. Novel cross-modal representations became manifest very rapidly. By disentangling the representation of the muscle from that of the action's goal, we further showed that passive listening to newly learnt action-related sounds activated a precise motor representation that depended on the variable contexts to which the individual was exposed during testing. Our results suggest that the human brain embodies a higher-order audio-visuo-motor representation of perceived actions, which is muscle-independent and corresponds to the goals of the action.
- Subjects
SOUNDS; LEARNING; ACTIVE learning; EFFERENT pathways; SOMATOSENSORY evoked potentials; NEURAL stimulation
- Publication
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2012, Vol 24, Issue 2, p464
- ISSN
0898-929X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1162/jocn_a_00134