relation: http://eprints.imtlucca.it/2863/
title: A topographical organization for action representation in the human brain
creator: Handjaras, Giacomo
creator: Bernardi, Giulio
creator: Benuzzi, Francesca
creator: Nichelli, Paolo
creator: Pietrini, Pietro
creator: Ricciardi, Emiliano
subject: RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
description: How the human brain represents distinct motor features into a unique finalized action still remains undefined. Previous models proposed the distinct features of a motor act to be hierarchically organized in separated, but functionally interconnected, cortical areas. Here, we hypothesized that distinct patterns across a wide expanse of cortex may actually subserve a topographically organized coding of different categories of actions that represents, at a higher cognitive level and independently from the distinct motor features, the action and its final aim as a whole. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and pattern classification approaches on the neural responses of 14 right-handed individuals passively watching short movies of hand-performed tool-mediated, transitive, and meaningful intransitive actions, we were able to discriminate with a high accuracy and characterize the category-specific response patterns. Actions are distinctively coded in distributed and overlapping neural responses within an action-selective network, comprising frontal, parietal, lateral occipital and ventrotemporal regions. This functional organization, that we named action topography, subserves a higher-level and more abstract representation of finalized actions and has the capacity to provide unique representations for multiple categories of actions. Hum Brain Mapp 36:3832–3844, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
publisher: Wiley
date: 2015
type: Article
type: PeerReviewed
identifier:   Handjaras, Giacomo and Bernardi, Giulio and Benuzzi, Francesca and Nichelli, Paolo and Pietrini, Pietro and Ricciardi, Emiliano  A topographical organization for action representation in the human brain.  Human Brain Mapping, 36 (10).  pp. 3832-3844.  ISSN 1065-9471      (2015)  
relation: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.22881
relation: 10.1002/hbm.22881