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. 2017 Nov 2;7(1):14967.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-14476-9.

Potential for social involvement modulates activity within the mirror and the mentalizing systems

Chiara Begliomini  1   2 , Andrea Cavallo  3 , Valeria Manera  4   5 , Cristina Becchio  3   6 , Roberto Stramare  7 , Diego Miotto  7 , Umberto Castiello  8   9   10
Affiliations

Potential for social involvement modulates activity within the mirror and the mentalizing systems

Chiara Begliomini et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Processing biological motion is fundamental for everyday life activities, such as social interaction, motor learning and nonverbal communication. The ability to detect the nature of a motor pattern has been investigated by means of point-light displays (PLD), sets of moving light points reproducing human kinematics, easily recognizable as meaningful once in motion. Although PLD are rudimentary, the human brain can decipher their content including social intentions. Neuroimaging studies suggest that inferring the social meaning conveyed by PLD could rely on both the Mirror Neuron System (MNS) and the Mentalizing System (MS), but their specific role to this endeavor remains uncertain. We describe a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment in which participants had to judge whether visually presented PLD and videoclips of human-like walkers (HL) were facing towards or away from them. Results show that coding for stimulus direction specifically engages the MNS when considering PLD moving away from the observer, while the nature of the stimulus reveals a dissociation between MNS -mainly involved in coding for PLD- and MS, recruited by HL moving away. These results suggest that the contribution of the two systems can be modulated by the nature of the observed stimulus and its potential for social involvement.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
interaction effects between the type of stimulus and movement direction. mPFC: medial PreFrontal Cortex; IFG: Inferior frontal Gyrus; IPL: Inferior Parietal Lobule; MNI: Montréal Neurological Institute; PLD: Point-Light Display; HL: Human-Like; FT: Facing Towards; FA: Facing Away. Images are presented in neurological convention using the template provided by the software Mricron_GL (http://www.cabiatl.com/mricrogl/).
Figure 2
Figure 2
The central panel depicts bistable point-light displays (PLD) and the two possible ways to interpret its motion direction: Facing The viewer (FT) on the left, and Facing Away (FA) on the right.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Brain regions considered for the Mirror Neuron Systems (MNS) and the Mentalizing System (MS) masks (both hemispheres).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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