%N 10
%J Human Brain Mapping
%R 10.1002/hbm.22881
%X 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.
%L eprints2863
%D 2015
%K action representation, action topography, pattern classification, fMRI, multivariate analysis
%A Giacomo Handjaras
%A Giulio Bernardi
%A Francesca Benuzzi
%A Paolo Nichelli
%A Pietro Pietrini
%A Emiliano Ricciardi
%I Wiley
%V 36
%O Open Access article - Fulltext on publisher's website
%T A topographical organization for action representation in the human brain
%P 3832-3844