Fear of movement-related pain disturbs cortical preparatory activity after becoming aware of motor intention

2021 ◽  
pp. 113379
Author(s):  
Michihiro Osumi ◽  
Masahiko Sumitani ◽  
Yuki Nishi ◽  
Satoshi Nobusako ◽  
Burcu Dilek ◽  
...  
2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 296-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erman Misirlisoy ◽  
Patrick Haggard

The capacity to inhibit a planned action gives human behavior its characteristic flexibility. How this mechanism operates and what factors influence a decision to act or not act remain relatively unexplored. We used EEG readiness potentials (RPs) to examine preparatory activity before each action of an ongoing sequence, in which one action was occasionally omitted. We compared RPs between sequences in which omissions were instructed by a rule (e.g., “omit every fourth action”) and sequences in which the participant themselves freely decided which action to omit. RP amplitude was reduced for actions that immediately preceded a voluntary omission but not a rule-based omission. We also used the regular temporal pattern of the action sequences to explore brain processes linked to omitting an action by time-locking EEG averages to the inferred time when an action would have occurred had it not been omitted. When omissions were instructed by a rule, there was a negative-going trend in the EEG, recalling the rising ramp of an RP. No such component was found for voluntary omissions. The results are consistent with a model in which spontaneously fluctuating activity in motor areas of the brain could bias “free” decisions to act or not.


2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-120
Author(s):  
Amanda M. Clifford ◽  
Eoghan Buckley ◽  
Dermot O’Farrell ◽  
Quinnette Louw ◽  
Colum Moloney

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1644) ◽  
pp. 20130420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Rizzolatti ◽  
Leonardo Fogassi

Mirror neurons are a specific type of visuomotor neuron that discharge both when a monkey executes a motor act and when it observes a similar motor act performed by another individual. In this article, we review first the basic properties of these neurons. We then describe visual features recently investigated which indicate that, besides encoding the goal of motor acts, mirror neurons are modulated by location in space of the observed motor acts, by the perspective from which the others’ motor acts are seen, and by the value associated with the object on which others’ motor acts are performed. In the last part of this article, we discuss the role of the mirror mechanism in planning actions and in understanding the intention underlying the others’ motor acts. We also review some human studies suggesting that motor intention in humans may rely, as in the monkey, on the mirror mechanism.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. e0147609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorien M. Zelle ◽  
Eva Corpeleijn ◽  
Gerald Klaassen ◽  
Elise Schutte ◽  
Gerjan Navis ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (11) ◽  
pp. 2117-2125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reshanne R. Reeder ◽  
Francesca Perini ◽  
Marius V. Peelen

Theories of visual selective attention propose that top–down preparatory attention signals mediate the selection of task-relevant information in cluttered scenes. Neuroimaging and electrophysiology studies have provided correlative evidence for this hypothesis, finding increased activity in target-selective neural populations in visual cortex in the period between a search cue and target onset. In this study, we used online TMS to test whether preparatory neural activity in visual cortex is causally involved in naturalistic object detection. In two experiments, participants detected the presence of object categories (cars, people) in a diverse set of photographs of real-world scenes. TMS was applied over a region in posterior temporal cortex identified by fMRI as carrying category-specific preparatory activity patterns. Results showed that TMS applied over posterior temporal cortex before scene onset (−200 and −100 msec) impaired the detection of object categories in subsequently presented scenes, relative to vertex and early visual cortex stimulation. This effect was specific to category level detection and was related to the type of attentional template participants adopted, with the strongest effects observed in participants adopting category level templates. These results provide evidence for a causal role of preparatory attention in mediating the detection of objects in cluttered daily-life environments.


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