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Comparative Study
. 2018 Jun 8;37(1):16.
doi: 10.1186/s40101-018-0175-9.

Effect of visual orientation on mu suppression in children: a comparative EEG study with adults

Yuki Nishimura  1   2 , Yuki Ikeda  3   4 , Airi Suematsu  3 , Shigekazu Higuchi  5
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Effect of visual orientation on mu suppression in children: a comparative EEG study with adults

Yuki Nishimura et al. J Physiol Anthropol. .

Abstract

Background: The human mirror neuron system exists in adults, and even in children. However, a significant, unanswered question in the literature concerns age differences in the effect of visual orientation of human body movements. The observation of actions performed by others is known to activate populations of neural cells called mirror neuron system. Moreover, the power of mu rhythms (8-13 Hz) in the EEG is known to decrease while performing and observing human movements. Therefore, the mu rhythm could be related to the activity of the mirror neuron system. This study investigated the effects of the visual perspective on electroencephalography responses to hand actions in two age groups.

Methods: The participants were 28 elementary school students and 26 university students. Videos of the two hands operating switches were used as stimuli. The electroencephalogram mu rhythm (8-13 Hz) was measured during stimuli presentation as an index of mirror neuron system activity.

Results: Adult participants showed significant mirror neuron system activation under both conditions, although no effect of visual perspectives was observed. On the other hand, children only reacted to egocentric stimuli and not to the others.

Conclusions: These findings confirmed the suggested differences in the activity of the mirror neuron system between different age groups. The demonstration that brain activities related to mirroring change during development could help explain previous findings in the literature.

Keywords: Association model; Growth and development; Mirror neuron system; Mu suppression.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

All subjects gave their written informed consent after a complete explanation of this study before participating in the study. The study was performed in accordance with the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the ethics committee of the Kyushu University.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Example of stimuli presented during the EEG recording. Initially, no hands were displayed in the video. After approximately 1 s, the hands appeared holding switches and operating them to turn on the lights. Left: In the egocentric condition, the hands appeared from the bottom of the screen so that the action was observed as the person’s own action. Right: In the allocentric condition, the spatial orientation was rotated by 180°
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Sensor layout of the EEG cap used in the current study. Each dot represents one of 65 channels. Channels included in the four ROIs are circled
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Grand-average mu and alpha event-related desynchronization recorded in children and adults. The darker line represents the ERD waveform for the egocentric condition, and the lighter line represents the waveform for the allocentric condition
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Mean mu wave ERD difference over three ROIs between egocentric and allocentric conditions a for children and b for adults (LC, MC, and RC). The filled bar represents the egocentric condition, and the outlined bar represents the allocentric condition. Error bars show ± 1 standard errors. Significant differences from zero are indicated. †p < 0.1; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01. It is assumed that brain activation is greater in regions where a stronger ERD is observed
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Alpha wave ERD difference between conditions (egocentric and allocentric) a for children and b for adults over the mid-occipital (MO) region. The filled bar represents the egocentric condition, and the outlined bar represents the allocentric condition. The error bars display standard errors. Significant differences from zero are indicated. **p < 0.01
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