Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 May;218(4):527-38.
doi: 10.1007/s00221-012-3046-3. Epub 2012 Mar 17.

Audio-visual facilitation of the mu rhythm

Affiliations

Audio-visual facilitation of the mu rhythm

Lucy M McGarry et al. Exp Brain Res. 2012 May.

Abstract

Previous studies demonstrate that perception of action presented audio-visually facilitates greater mirror neuron system (MNS) activity in humans (Kaplan and Iacoboni in Cogn Process 8(2):103-113, 2007) and non-human primates (Keysers et al. in Exp Brain Res 153(4):628-636, 2003) than perception of action presented unimodally. In the current study, we examined whether audio-visual facilitation of the MNS can be indexed using electroencephalography (EEG) measurement of the mu rhythm. The mu rhythm is an EEG oscillation with peaks at 10 and 20 Hz that is suppressed during the execution and perception of action and is speculated to reflect activity in the premotor and inferior parietal cortices as a result of MNS activation (Pineda in Behav Brain Funct 4(1):47, 2008). Participants observed experimental stimuli unimodally (visual-alone or audio-alone) or bimodally during randomized presentations of two hands ripping a sheet of paper, and a control video depicting a box moving up and down. Audio-visual perception of action stimuli led to greater event-related desynchrony (ERD) of the 8-13 Hz mu rhythm compared to unimodal perception of the same stimuli over the C3 electrode, as well as in a left central cluster when data were examined in source space. These results are consistent with Kaplan and Iacoboni's (in Cogn Process 8(2):103-113, 2007), findings that indicate audio-visual facilitation of the MNS; our left central cluster was localized approximately 13.89 mm away from the ventral premotor cluster identified in their fMRI study, suggesting that these clusters originate from similar sources. Consistency of results in electrode space and component space support the use of ICA as a valid source localization tool.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Psychon Bull Rev. 2010 Jun;17(3):317-22 - PubMed
    1. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2005 Apr;15(2):213-8 - PubMed
    1. Exp Brain Res. 2003 Dec;153(4):628-36 - PubMed
    1. Annu Rev Neurosci. 2004;27:169-92 - PubMed
    1. Cogn Process. 2007 Jun;8(2):103-13 - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources