Playing together, laughing together: Rapid facial mimicry and social sensitivity in lowland gorillas

In non-human animals, the phenomenon of Rapid Facial Mimicry (RFM) - the automatic, involuntary and rapid (< 1 sec) replication of others’ facial expressions—has been mainly investigated in the playful domain. In immature lowland gorillas Gorilla gorilla gorilla both Play Face (PF) and Full Play Face (FPF) are rapidly mimicked between the players. This makes the species suitable to test hypotheses on the factors influencing RFM during play. The observations on three captive groups of lowland gorillas (N = 27) revealed that contrary to expectations, the closeness of social bond negatively influenced the occurrence of RFM but it did not affect either RFM latency or its overlapping index. RFM was affected by the degree of symmetry of play fighting: the more balanced the session, the higher the occurrence of RFM. Players of the same sex class responded faster than players of different sex. These findings suggest that RFM may help synchronizing behaviours of playmates matching in size (same-sex) and promote symmetric playful interactions. “Laughing together” (measured by the RFM overlapping index) lasted longer when the responder perfectly mirrored the partner expression (PF→PF; FPF→FPF). If PF and FPF convey information on the different play roughness degree, through “laughing together” the players could coordinate their actions and share positive moods and playful intensity. If the perfect congruency in the motor resonance, also known as social sensitivity, can foster a possible emotional dialogue between gorillas remains to be investigated.

Visual recognition of words learned with gestures induces motor resonance in the forearm muscles

According to theories of Embodied Cognition, memory for words is related to sensorimotor experiences collected during learning. At a neural level, words encoded with self-performed gestures are represented in distributed sensorimotor networks that resonate during word recognition. Here, we ask whether muscles involved in gesture execution also resonate during word recognition. Native German speakers encoded words by reading them (baseline condition) or by reading them in tandem with picture observation, gesture observation, or gesture observation and execution. Surface electromyogram (EMG) activity from both arms was recorded during the word recognition task and responses were detected using eye-tracking. The recognition of words encoded with self-performed gestures coincided with an increase in arm muscle EMG activity compared to the recognition of words learned under other conditions. This finding suggests that sensorimotor networks resonate into the periphery and provides new evidence for a strongly embodied view of recognition memory.

Visual Attention and Motion Visibility Modulate Motor Resonance during Observation of Human Walking in Different Manners

To advance our knowledge on the motor system during cyclic gait observation, we aimed to explore the effects of gaze fixation on corticospinal excitability evaluated by single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Fourteen healthy adult volunteers watched a video of a demonstrator walking on a treadmill under three different conditions: (1) observing the right lower limb, (2) observing the right ankle joint, and (3) observing the right lower limb on a video focused on the area below the knee. In each condition, motor-evoked potentials elicited by TMS in the tibialis anterior (TA) muscle were measured synchronously with the demonstrator’s initial contact and toe-off points. Directing visual attention to the ankle joint and focusing on its movements caused corticospinal facilitation in the TA muscle compared with watching the video without any visual fixation. In addition, phase-dependent differences in corticospinal excitability between the initial contact and toe-off points were only detected when the visibility range was restricted to below the knee. Our findings indicated that motor resonance during cyclic gait observation is modulated by visual attention and motion visibility in different activation manners.

First and Second Language at Hand: A Chronometric Transcranial-Magnetic Stimulation Study on Semantic and Motor Resonance

According to embodied theories, motor and language processing bidirectionally interact: Motor activation modulates behavior in lexico-semantic tasks (semantic resonance), whereas understanding motor-related words entails activation of the corresponding motor brain areas (motor resonance). Whereas many studies investigated such interaction in the first language (L1), only few did so in a second language (L2), focusing on motor resonance. Here, we directly compared L1 and a late L2, for the first time both in terms of semantic and motor resonance and both in terms of magnitude and timing, by taking advantage of single-pulse TMS. Twenty-five bilinguals judged in each language, whether hand motor-related (“grasp”) and non-motor-related verbs (“believe”), were physical or mental. Meanwhile, we applied TMS on the hand motor cortex at 125, 275, 350, and 500 msec post verb onset, and recorded behavioral responses and TMS-induced motor evoked potentials. TMS induced faster responses for L1 versus L2 motor and nonmotor verbs at 125 msec (three-way interaction β = −0.0442, 95% CI [0.0814, −0.0070]), showing a semantic resonance effect at an early stage of word processing in L1 but not in L2. Concerning motor resonance, TMS-induced motor evoked potentials at 275 msec revealed higher motor cortex excitability for L2 versus L1 processing (two-way interaction β = 0.095, 95% CI [0.017, 0.173]). These findings confirm action–language interaction at early stages of word recognition, provide further evidence that L1 and L2 are differently embodied, and call for an update of existing models of bilingualism and embodiment, concerning both language representations and processing.

Modulation of Response Times During Processing of Emotional Body Language

The investigation of how humans perceive and respond to emotional signals conveyed by the human body has been for a long time secondary compared with the investigation of facial expressions and emotional scenes recognition. The aims of this behavioral study were to assess the ability to process emotional body postures and to test whether motor response is mainly driven by the emotional content of the picture or if it is influenced by motor resonance. Emotional body postures and scenes (IAPS) divided into three clusters (fear, happiness, and neutral) were shown to 25 healthy subjects (13 males, mean age ± SD: 22.3 ± 1.8 years) in a three-alternative forced choice task. Subjects were asked to recognize the emotional content of the pictures by pressing one of three keys as fast as possible in order to estimate response times (RTs). The rating of valence and arousal was also performed. We found shorter RTs for fearful body postures as compared with happy and neutral postures. In contrast, no differences across emotional categories were found for the IAPS stimuli. Analysis on valence and arousal and the subsequent item analysis showed an excellent reliability of the two sets of images used in the experiment. Our results show that fearful body postures are rapidly recognized and processed, probably thanks to the automatic activation of a series of central nervous system structures orchestrating the defensive threat reactions, strengthening and supporting previous neurophysiological and behavioral findings in body language processing.

Stato d’animo e significato in architettura

Explores the role of mood and meaning in architectural experience via the German no-tion of stimmung, relating to the central questions of temperance and harmony in music and architecture. Motor resonance and attunement are under-acknowledged ways that architecture shapes experience. Pedagogical skills that acknowledge the complexity of an embodied and situated consciousness, emphasising qualitative, experiential and em-bodied approaches.