The posterior superior temporal sulcus is sensitive to the outcome of human and non-human goal-directed actions

Abstract

Prior studies have demonstrated that the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is involved in analyzing the intentions underlying actions and is sensitive to the context within which actions occur. However, it is debated whether the pSTS is actually sensitive to goals underlying actions, or whether previous studies can be interpreted to suggest that the pSTS is instead involved in the allocation of visual attention towards unexpected events. In addition, little is known about whether the pSTS is specialized for reasoning about the actions of social agents or whether the pSTS is sensitive to the actions of both animate and inanimate entities. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated activation in response to passive viewing of successful and unsuccessful animate and inanimate goal-directed actions. Activation in the right pSTS was stronger in response to failed actions compared to successful actions, suggesting that the pSTS plays a role in encoding the goals underlying actions. Activation in the pSTS did not differentiate between animate and inanimate actions, suggesting that the pSTS is sensitive to the goal-directed actions of both animate and inanimate entities.

Fig. 1

Experimental conditions. (A) Successful animate goal-directed action. (B) Failed animate goal-directed action. (C) Successful inanimate goal-directed action. (D) Failed inanimate goal-directed action.

Fig. 2

Top panel: activation map from FAILED vs SUCCESSFUL contrast, displayed on a cortical surface representation. In all images, the color bar ranges from z = 2.3 (dark red) to 3.8 (bright yellow). Bottom panel: average BOLD signal change time courses from the activated voxels in the right pSTS from epochs corresponding to failed and successful actions. Error bars indicate standard error of BOLD signal at a given time point. Movie presentation begins at 0 s and ends at 3 s.

Fig. 3

(A) Activation map for ANIMATE vs BASELINE contrast, displayed on a cortical surface representation. (B) Activation map for INANIMATE vs BASELINE contrast.

Fig. 4

Anatomical ROI analysis results: average BOLD signal change time course from epochs corresponding to animate and inanimate actions. Error bars indicate standard error of BOLD signal at a given time point. Movie presentation begins at 0 s and ends at 3 s.