Biological motion processing as a hallmark of social cognition

Post-migration living difficulties and poor mental health associated with increased interpretation bias for threat

Previous research has found associations between mental health difficulties and interpretation biases, including heightened interpretation of threat from neutral or ambiguous stimuli. Building on this research, we explored associations between interpretation biases (positive and negative) and three constructs that have been linked to migrant experience: mental health symptoms (Global Severity Index [GSI]), Post-Migration Living Difficulties (PMLD), and Perceived Ethnic Discrimination Questionnaire (PEDQ). Two hundred thirty students who identified as first- (n = 94) or second-generation ethnic minority migrants (n = 68), and first-generation White migrants (n = 68) completed measures of GSI, PEDQ, and PMLD. They also performed an interpretation bias task using Point Light Walkers (PLW), dynamic stimuli with reduced visual input that are easily perceived as humans performing an action. Five categories of PLW were used: four that clearly depicted human forms undertaking positive, neutral, negative, or ambiguous actions, and a fifth that involved scrambled animations with no clear action or form. Participants were asked to imagine their interaction with the stimuli and rate their friendliness (positive interpretation bias) and aggressiveness (interpretation bias for threat). We found that the three groups differed on PEDQ and PMLD, with no significant differences in GSI, and the three measured were positively correlated. Poorer mental health and increased PMLD were associated with a heightened interpretation for threat of scrambled animations only. These findings have implications for understanding of the role of threat biases in mental health and the migrant experience.

Top-down biological motion perception does not differ between adults scoring high versus low on autism traits

The perception of biological motion is an important social cognitive ability. Models of biological motion perception recognize two processes that contribute to the perception of biological motion: a bottom-up process that binds optic-flow patterns into a coherent percept of biological motion and a top-down process that binds sequences of body-posture 'snapshots' over time into a fluent percept of biological motion. The vast majority of studies on autism and biological motion perception have used point-light figure stimuli, which elicit biological motion perception predominantly via bottom-up processes. Here, we investigated whether autism is associated with deviances in the top-down processing of biological motion. For this, we tested a sample of adults scoring low vs high on autism traits on a recently validated EEG paradigm in which apparent biological motion is combined with frequency tagging (Cracco et al., 2022) to dissociate between two percepts: 1) the representation of individual body postures, and 2) their temporal integration into movements. In contrast to our hypothesis, we found no evidence for a diminished temporal body posture integration in the high-scoring group. We did, however, find a group difference that suggests that adults scoring high on autism traits have a visual processing style that focuses more on a single percept (i.e. either body postures or movements, contingent on saliency) compared to adults scoring low on autism traits who instead seemed to represent the two percepts included in the paradigm in a more balanced manner. Although unexpected, this finding aligns well with the autism literature on perceptual stability.

Biological motion perception in the theoretical framework of perceptual decision-making: An event-related potential study

Biological motion perception plays a critical role in various decisions in daily life. Failure to decide accordingly in such a perceptual task could have life-threatening consequences. Neurophysiology and computational modeling studies suggest two processes mediating perceptual decision-making. One of these signals is associated with the accumulation of sensory evidence and the other with response selection. Recent EEG studies with humans have introduced an event-related potential called Centroparietal Positive Potential (CPP) as a neural marker aligned with the sensory evidence accumulation while effectively distinguishing it from motor-related lateralized readiness potential (LRP). The present study aims to investigate the neural mechanisms of biological motion perception in the framework of perceptual decision-making, which has been overlooked before. More specifically, we examine whether CPP would track the coherence of the biological motion stimuli and could be distinguished from the LRP signal. We recorded EEG from human participants while they performed a direction discrimination task of a point-light walker stimulus embedded in various levels of noise. Our behavioral findings revealed shorter reaction times and reduced miss rates as the coherence of the stimuli increased. In addition, CPP tracked the coherence of the biological motion stimuli with a tendency to reach a common level during the response, albeit with a later onset than the previously reported results in random-dot motion paradigms. Furthermore, CPP was distinguished from the LRP signal based on its temporal profile. Overall, our results suggest that the mechanisms underlying perceptual decision-making generalize to more complex and socially significant stimuli like biological motion.

Atypical Time to Contact Estimation in Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) present atypical sensory processing in the perception of moving stimuli and biological motion. The present study aims to explore the performance of young adults with ASD in a time to contact (TTC) estimation task involving social and non-social stimuli. TTC estimation involves extrapolating the trajectory of a moving target concealed by an occluder, based on the visible portion of its path, to predict the target's arrival time at a specific position. Sixteen participants with a diagnosis of level-1 ASD (M = 19.2 years, SE = 0.54 years; 3 F, 13 M) and sixteen participants with TD (M = 22.3 years, SE = 0.44 years; 3 F, 13 M) took part in the study and underwent a TTC estimation task. The task presented two object types (a car and a point-light walker), different object speeds, occluder lengths, motion directions and motion congruency. For the car object, a larger overestimation of TTC emerged for ASDs than for TDs, whereas no difference between ASDs and TDs emerged for the point-light walker. ASDs exhibited a larger TTC overestimation for the car object than for the point-light walker, whereas no difference between object types emerged for TDs. Our results indicated an atypical TTC estimation process in young adults with ASD. Given its importance in daily life, future studies should further explore this skill. Significant effects that emerged from the analysis are discussed.

Dynamic brain communication underwriting face pareidolia

Face pareidolia is a tendency to seeing faces in nonface images that reflects high tuning to a face scheme. Yet, studies of the brain networks underwriting face pareidolia are scarce. Here, we examined the time course and dynamic topography of gamma oscillatory neuromagnetic activity while administering a task with nonface images resembling a face. Images were presented either with canonical orientation or with display inversion that heavily impedes face pareidolia. At early processing stages, the peaks in gamma activity (40 to 45 Hz) to images either triggering or not face pareidolia originate mainly from the right medioventral and lateral occipital cortices, rostral and caudal cuneus gyri, and medial superior occipital gyrus. Yet, the difference occurred at later processing stages in the high-frequency range of 80 to 85 Hz over a set of the areas constituting the social brain. The findings speak rather for a relatively late neural network playing a key role in face pareidolia. Strikingly, a cutting-edge analysis of brain connectivity unfolding over time reveals mutual feedforward and feedback intra- and interhemispheric communication not only within the social brain but also within the extended large-scale network of down- and upstream regions. In particular, the superior temporal sulcus and insula strongly engage in communication with other brain regions either as signal transmitters or recipients throughout the whole processing of face-pareidolia images.

Brain mechanisms involved in the perception of emotional gait: A combined magnetoencephalography and virtual reality study

Brain processes associated with emotion perception from biological motion have been largely investigated using point-light displays that are devoid of pictorial information and not representative of everyday life. In this study, we investigated the brain signals evoked when perceiving emotions arising from body movements of virtual pedestrians walking in a community environment. Magnetoencephalography was used to record brain activation in 21 healthy young adults discriminating the emotional gaits (neutral, angry, happy) of virtual male/female pedestrians. Event-related responses in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), fusiform body area (FBA), extrastriate body area (EBA), amygdala (AMG), and lateral occipital cortex (Occ) were examined. Brain signals were characterized by an early positive peak (P1;∼200ms) and a late positive potential component (LPP) comprising of an early (400-600ms), middle (600-1000ms) and late phase (1000-1500ms). Generalized estimating equations revealed that P1 amplitude was unaffected by emotion and gender of pedestrians. LPP amplitude showed a significant emotion X phase interaction in all regions of interest, revealing i) an emotion-dependent modulation starting in pSTS and Occ, followed by AMG, FBA and EBA, and ii) generally enhanced responses for angry vs. other gait stimuli in the middle LPP phase. LPP also showed a gender X phase interaction in pSTS and Occ, as gender affected the time course of the response to emotional gait. Present findings show that brain activation within areas associated with biological motion, form, and emotion processing is modulated by emotional gait stimuli rendered by virtual simulations representative of everyday life.

Kinematic observation reduces effect of aging on episodic memory performance

This study investigated the influence of kinematics observation (i.e., observing action from only the motion of the main joints of an actor) on episodic memory performance differences between young and older adults. To this end, 42 young (20-35 years) and 45 older (60-75 years) participants performed a free recall task in two different conditions: either after an encoding phase consisting of the visual presentation and reading of action verbs or after an encoding phase consisting of the visual presentation and naming of point-light displays of humans performing the same actions. Results showed a beneficial effect of point-light display encoding for both young and older participants but with a more pronounced benefit for the older participants compared to young adults. These findings are discussed in relation to the embodied view of memory which considers that memory is directly linked to the sensorimotor experiences and the environmental support hypothesis which postulates that elaborate processing can improve memory performance. In conclusion, kinematic observation could constitute an interesting potential intervention for supporting memory in older adults.

Evaluations of dyadic synchrony: observers' traits influence estimation and enjoyment of synchrony in mirror-game movements

While evidence abounds that motor synchrony is a powerful form of 'social glue' for those involved, we have yet to understand how observers perceive motor synchrony: can observers estimate the degree of synchrony accurately? Is synchrony aesthetically pleasing? In two preregistered experiments (n = 161 each), we assess how accurately observers can estimate the degree of synchrony in dyads playing the mirror game, and how much observers enjoy watching these movements. We further assess whether accuracy and enjoyment are influenced by individual differences in self-reported embodied expertise (ability to reproduce movements, body awareness, body competence), psychosocial resources (extraversion, self-esteem), or social competencies (empathy, autistic traits), while objectively controlling for the degree of measured synchrony and complexity. The data revealed that observers' estimated synchrony with poor accuracy, showing a tendency to underestimate the level of synchrony. Accuracy for low synchrony improved with increasing body competence, while accuracy for high synchrony improved with increasing autistic traits. Observers' enjoyment of dyadic movements correlated positively with the degree of measured synchrony, the predictability of the movements, and the observer's empathy. Furthermore, very low enjoyment was associated with increased body perception. Our findings indicate that accuracy in perceiving synchrony is closely linked to embodiment, while aesthetic evaluations of action hinge on individual differences.

The domestic chick as an animal model of autism spectrum disorder: building adaptive social perceptions through prenatally formed predispositions

Equipped with an early social predisposition immediately post-birth, humans typically form associations with mothers and other family members through exposure learning, canalized by a prenatally formed predisposition of visual preference to biological motion, face configuration, and other cues of animacy. If impaired, reduced preferences can lead to social interaction impairments such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) via misguided canalization. Despite being taxonomically distant, domestic chicks could also follow a homologous developmental trajectory toward adaptive socialization through imprinting, which is guided via predisposed preferences similar to those of humans, thereby suggesting that chicks are a valid animal model of ASD. In addition to the phenotypic similarities in predisposition with human newborns, accumulating evidence on the responsible molecular mechanisms suggests the construct validity of the chick model. Considering the recent progress in the evo-devo studies in vertebrates, we reviewed the advantages and limitations of the chick model of developmental mental diseases in humans.

Disrupted third visual pathway function in schizophrenia: Evidence from real and implied motion processing

Impaired motion perception in schizophrenia has been associated with deficits in social-cognitive processes and with reduced activation of visual sensory regions, including the middle temporal area (MT+) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS). These findings are consistent with the recent proposal of the existence of a specific 'third visual pathway' specialized for social perception in which motion is a fundamental component. The third visual pathway transmits visual information from early sensory visual processing areas to the STS, with MT+ acting as a critical intermediary. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate functioning of this pathway during processing of naturalistic videos with explicit (real) motion and static images with implied motion cues. These measures were related to face emotion recognition and motion-perception, as measured behaviorally. Participants were 28 individuals with schizophrenia (Sz) and 20 neurotypical controls. Compared to controls, individuals with Sz showed reduced activation of third visual pathway regions (MT+, pSTS) in response to both real- and implied-motion stimuli. Dysfunction of early visual cortex and pulvinar were also associated with aberrant real-motion processing. Implied-motion stimuli additionally engaged a wide network of brain areas including parietal, motor and frontal nodes of the human mirror neuron system. The findings support concepts of MT+ as a mediator between visual sensory areas and higher-order brain and argue for greater focus on MT+ contributions to social-cognitive processing, in addition to its well-documented role in visual motion processing.

Configuration of the action observation network depends on the goals of the observer

Observing the actions of others engages a core action observation network (AON) that includes the bilateral inferior frontal cortex (IFC), posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL) (Caspers et al., 2010). Each region in the AON has functional properties that are heterogeneous and include representing the perceptual properties of action, predicting action outcomes and making inferences as to the goals of the actor. Critically, recent evidence shows that neural representations within the pSTS are sharpened when attending to the kinematics of the actor, such that the top-down guided attention reshapes underlying neural representations. In this study we evaluate how attention alters network connectivity within the AON as a system. Cues directed participant's attention to the goal, kinematics, or identity depicted in short action animations while brain responses were measured by fMRI. We identified those parcels within the AON with functional connectivity modulated by task. Results show that connectivity between the right pSTS and right IFC, and bilateral extended STS (STS+) were modulated during action observation such that connections were strengthened when the participant was attending to the action than goal. This finding is contrasted by the univariate results, which no univariate modulations in these brain regions except for right IFC. Using the functional networks defined by Yeo et al. (2011), we identified the parcels that are modulated by the attention to consist mainly of the fronto-parietal control network and default mode networks. These results are consistent with models of top-down feedback from executive system in the IFC to pSTS and implicates a right lateralized dual pathway model for action observation when focused on whole-body kinematics.

The inside out model of emotion recognition: how the shape of one's internal emotional landscape influences the recognition of others' emotions

Some people are exceptional at reading emotional expressions, while others struggle. Here we ask whether the way we experience emotion "on the inside" influences the way we expect emotions to be expressed in the "outside world" and subsequently our ability to read others' emotional expressions. Across multiple experiments, incorporating discovery and replication samples, we develop EmoMap (N = 20; N = 271) and ExpressionMap (N = 98; replication N = 193) to map adults' experiences of emotions and visual representations of others' emotions. Some individuals have modular maps, wherein emotional experiences and visual representations are consistent and distinct-anger looks and feels different from happiness, which looks and feels different from sadness. In contrast, others have experiences and representations that are variable and overlapping-anger, happiness, and sadness look and feel similar and are easily confused for one another. Here we illustrate an association between these maps: those with consistent and distinct experiences of emotion also have consistent and distinct visual representations of emotion. Finally (N = 193), we construct the Inside Out Model of Emotion Recognition, which explains 60.8% of the variance in emotion recognition and illuminates multiple pathways to emotion recognition difficulties. These findings have important implications for understanding the emotion recognition difficulties documented in numerous clinical populations.

Major Depression and the Perception of Affective Instrumental and Expressive Gestures: An fMRI Investigation

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with biased perception of human movement. Gesture is important for communication and in this study we investigated neural correlates of gesture perception in MDD. We hypothesised different neural activity between individuals with MDD and typical individuals when viewing instrumental and expressive gestures that were negatively or positively valenced. Differences were expected in brain areas associated with gesture perception, including superior temporal, frontal, and emotion processing regions. We recruited 12 individuals with MDD and 12 typical controls matched on age, gender, and handedness. They viewed gestures displayed by stick figures while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed. Results of a random effects three-way mixed ANOVA indicated that individuals with MDD had greater activity in the right claustrum compared to controls, regardless of gesture type or valence. Additionally, we observed main effects of gesture type and valence, regardless of group. Perceiving instrumental compared to expressive gestures was associated with greater activity in the left cuneus and left superior temporal gyrus, while perceiving negative compared to positive gestures was associated with greater activity in the right precuneus and right lingual gyrus. We also observed a two-way interaction between gesture type and valence in various brain regions.

Hysteresis reveals a happiness bias effect in dynamic emotion recognition from ambiguous biological motion

Considering the nonlinear dynamic nature of emotion recognition, it is believed to be strongly dependent on temporal context. This can be investigated by resorting to the phenomenon of hysteresis, which features a form of serial dependence, entailed by continuous temporal stimulus trajectories. Under positive hysteresis, the percept remains stable in visual memory (persistence) while in negative hysteresis, it shifts earlier (adaptation) to the opposite interpretation. Here, we asked whether positive or negative hysteresis occurs in emotion recognition of inherently ambiguous biological motion, while testing for the controversial debate of a negative versus positive emotional bias. Participants (n = 22) performed a psychophysical experiment in which they were asked to judge stimulus transitions between two emotions, happiness and sadness, from an actor database, and report perceived emotion across time, from one emotion to the opposite as physical cues were continuously changing. Our results reveal perceptual hysteresis in ambiguous emotion recognition, with positive hysteresis (visual persistence) predominating. However, negative hysteresis (adaptation/fatigue) was also observed in particular in the direction from sadness to happiness. This demonstrates a positive (happiness) bias in emotion recognition in ambiguous biological motion recognition. Finally, the interplay between positive and negative hysteresis suggests an underlying competition between visual persistence and adaptation mechanisms during ambiguous emotion recognition.

Identifying critical kinematic features of animate motion and contribution to animacy perception

Humans can distinguish flying birds from drones based solely on motion features when no image information is available. However, it remains unclear which motion features of animate motion induce our animacy perception. To address this, we first analyzed the differences in centroid motion between birds and drones, and discovered that birds exhibit greater acceleration, angular speed, and trajectory fluctuations. We further determined the order of their importance in evoking animacy perception was trajectory fluctuations, acceleration, and speed. More interestingly, people judge whether a moving object is alive using a feature-matching strategy, implying that animacy perception is induced in a key feature-triggered way rather than relying on the accumulation of evidence. Our findings not only shed light on the critical motion features that induce animacy perception and their relative contributions but also have important implications for developing target classification algorithms based on motion features.

TMS-induced inhibition of the left premotor cortex modulates illusory social perception

Communicative actions from one person are used to predict another person's response. However, in some cases, these predictions can outweigh the processing of sensory information and lead to illusory social perception such as seeing two people interact, although only one is present (i.e., seeing a Bayesian ghost). We applied either inhibitory brain stimulation over the left premotor cortex (i.e., real TMS) or sham TMS. Then, participants indicated the presence or absence of a masked agent that followed a communicative or individual gesture of another agent. As expected, participants had more false alarms in the communicative (i.e., Bayesian ghosts) than individual condition in the sham TMS session and this difference between conditions vanished after real TMS. In contrast to our hypothesis, the number of false alarms increased (rather than decreased) after real TMS. These pre-registered findings confirm the significance of the premotor cortex for social action predictions and illusory social perception.

Construction and validation of the Dalian emotional movement open-source set (DEMOS)

Human body movements are important for emotion recognition and social communication and have received extensive attention from researchers. In this field, emotional biological motion stimuli, as depicted by point-light displays, are widely used. However, the number of stimuli in the existing material library is small, and there is a lack of standardized indicators, which subsequently limits experimental design and conduction. Therefore, based on our prior kinematic dataset, we constructed the Dalian Emotional Movement Open-source Set (DEMOS) using computational modeling. The DEMOS has three views (i.e., frontal 0°, left 45°, and left 90°) and in total comprises 2664 high-quality videos of emotional biological motion, each displaying happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and neutral. All stimuli were validated in terms of recognition accuracy, emotional intensity, and subjective movement. The objective movement for each expression was also calculated. The DEMOS can be downloaded for free from https://osf.io/83fst/ . To our knowledge, this is the largest multi-view emotional biological motion set based on the whole body. The DEMOS can be applied in many fields, including affective computing, social cognition, and psychiatry.

Representational momentum of biological motion in full-body, point-light and single-dot displays

Observing the actions of others triggers, in our brain, an internal and automatic simulation of its unfolding in time. Here, we investigated whether the instantaneous internal representation of an observed action is modulated by the point of view under which an action is observed and the stimulus type. To this end, we motion captured the elliptical arm movement of a human actor and used these trajectories to animate a photorealistic avatar, a point-light stimulus or a single dot rendered either from an egocentric or an allocentric point of view. Crucially, the underlying physical characteristics of the movement were the same in all conditions. In a representational momentum paradigm, we then asked subjects to report the perceived last position of an observed movement at the moment in which the stimulus was randomly stopped. In all conditions, subjects tended to misremember the last configuration of the observed stimulus as being further forward than the veridical last showed position. This misrepresentation was however significantly smaller for full-body stimuli compared to point-light and single dot displays and it was not modulated by the point of view. It was also smaller when first-person full body stimuli were compared with a stimulus consisting of a solid shape moving with the same physical motion. We interpret these findings as evidence that full-body stimuli elicit a simulation process that is closer to the instantaneous veridical configuration of the observed movements while impoverished displays (both point-light and single-dot) elicit a prediction that is further forward in time. This simulation process seems to be independent from the point of view under which the actions are observed.

Mentalization, Oxytocin, and Cortisol in the General Population

Although evidence suggests the role of oxytocin and cortisol in social cognition and emotion regulation, it is less known how their peripheral levels are related to social perception (biological motion detection) and mentalization (self-reflection, emotional awareness, and affect regulation) in the general population. We assessed 150 healthy individuals from the general community on a mentalization questionnaire, a scale measuring the intensity of positive and negative emotions, and measured oxytocin and cortisol levels in the saliva. Oxytocin but not cortisol level and biological motion detection predicted mentalization abilities. There was a positive correlation between mentalization and positive emotions and between mentalization and biological motion detection. These results suggest that oxytocin, but not cortisol, plays a role in low-level perceptual and self-reflective aspects of social cognition.

Do subtle cultural differences sculpt face pareidolia?

Face tuning to non-face images such as shadows or grilled toasts is termed face pareidolia. Face-pareidolia images represent a valuable tool for investigation of social cognition in mental disorders. Here we examined (i) whether, and, if so, how face pareidolia is affected by subtle cultural differences; and (ii) whether this impact is modulated by gender. With this purpose in mind, females and males from Northern Italy were administered a set of Face-n-Thing images, photographs of objects such as houses or waves to a varying degree resembling a face. Participants were presented with pareidolia images with canonical upright orientation and display inversion that heavily affects face pareidolia. In a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm, beholders had to indicate whether each image resembled a face. The outcome was compared with the findings obtained in the Southwest of Germany. With upright orientation, neither cultural background nor gender affected face pareidolia. As expected, display inversion generally mired face pareidolia. Yet, while display inversion led to a drastic reduction of face impression in German males as compared to females, in Italians, no gender differences were found. In a nutshell, subtle cultural differences do not sculpt face pareidolia, but instead affect face impression in a gender-specific way under unusual viewing conditions. Clarification of the origins of these effects requires tailored brain imaging work. Implications for transcultural psychiatry, in particular, for schizophrenia research, are highlighted and discussed.

Neural responses to biological motion distinguish autistic and schizotypal traits

Difficulties in social interactions characterize both autism and schizophrenia and are correlated in the neurotypical population. It is unknown whether this represents a shared etiology or superficial phenotypic overlap. Both conditions exhibit atypical neural activity in response to the perception of social stimuli and decreased neural synchronization between individuals. This study investigated if neural activity and neural synchronization associated with biological motion perception are differentially associated with autistic and schizotypal traits in the neurotypical population. Participants viewed naturalistic social interactions while hemodynamic brain activity was measured with fMRI, which was modeled against a continuous measure of the extent of biological motion. General linear model analysis revealed that biological motion perception was associated with neural activity across the action observation network. However, intersubject phase synchronization analysis revealed neural activity to be synchronized between individuals in occipital and parietal areas but desynchronized in temporal and frontal regions. Autistic traits were associated with decreased neural activity (precuneus and middle cingulate gyrus), and schizotypal traits were associated with decreased neural synchronization (middle and inferior frontal gyri). Biological motion perception elicits divergent patterns of neural activity and synchronization, which dissociate autistic and schizotypal traits in the general population, suggesting that they originate from different neural mechanisms.

The role of implicit motor simulation on action verb memory

Observation is known to improve memory for action. Previous findings linked such an effect with an easier relation processing of action components following observation compared to mere sentence reading. However, action observation also elicits implicit motor simulation, that is a processing of one's movement through the observer own motor system. We aimed to assess whether encoding of implicit motor simulation can also explain why observation is better than reading for action memory. To prevent influence of item relation processing, two studies about isolated action verbs learning were designed. In Experiment 1, action verbs were encoded with short videos of point-light human movements or with written definitions. Subsequent free recall indicated better memory for the verbs within the video clip condition. Experiment 2 compared two encoding conditions based on point-light human movement videos. Half of the verbs were learned with their normal corresponding movement (biological kinematic). For the other half of the verbs, the velocity of point-light movements was modified to create abnormal nonbiological kinematic actions. We observed better free recall for the verbs learned with biological kinematics. Taken together, those results suggest that action observation is beneficial because it allows the encoding of motor-related information (implicit motor simulation). Semantic resonance between linguistic and motor representations of action could also contribute to memory improvement. Contrary to previous studies, our results cannot be explained by an improvement of items relation processing. However, it suggests that the basic level of action verb memory is sensorimotor perception, such as implicit motor simulation.

Cortical encoding of rhythmic kinematic structures in biological motion

Biological motion (BM) perception is of great survival value to human beings. The critical characteristics of BM information lie in kinematic cues containing rhythmic structures. However, how rhythmic kinematic structures of BM are dynamically represented in the brain and contribute to visual BM processing remains largely unknown. Here, we probed this issue in three experiments using electroencephalogram (EEG). We found that neural oscillations of observers entrained to the hierarchical kinematic structures of the BM sequences (i.e., step-cycle and gait-cycle for point-light walkers). Notably, only the cortical tracking of the higher-level rhythmic structure (i.e., gait-cycle) exhibited a BM processing specificity, manifested by enhanced neural responses to upright over inverted BM stimuli. This effect could be extended to different motion types and tasks, with its strength positively correlated with the perceptual sensitivity to BM stimuli at the right temporal brain region dedicated to visual BM processing. Modeling results further suggest that the neural encoding of spatiotemporally integrative kinematic cues, in particular the opponent motions of bilateral limbs, drives the selective cortical tracking of BM information. These findings underscore the existence of a cortical mechanism that encodes periodic kinematic features of body movements, which underlies the dynamic construction of visual BM perception.

Atypical development of social and nonsocial working memory capacity among preschoolers with autism spectrum disorders

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have shown impaired performance in canonical and nonsocial working memory (WM). However, no study has investigated social WM and its early development. Using biological motion stimuli, our study assessed the development of social and nonsocial WM capacity among children with or without ASD across the age span between 4 and 6 (N = 150). While typically developing (TD) children show a rapid development from age 5 to 6, children with ASD showed a delayed development for both social and nonsocial WM capacity, reaching a significant group difference at age 6. Furthermore, we found a negative correlation between social (but not nonsocial) WM capacity and the severity of autistic symptoms among children with ASD. In contrast, there is a positive correlation between both types of WM capacity and intelligence among TD children but not among children with ASD. Our findings thus indicate that individuals with ASD miss the rapid development of WM capacity in early childhood and, particularly, their delayed social WM development might contribute to core symptoms that critically depend on social information processing.

Spatio-temporal dynamics of oscillatory brain activity during the observation of actions and interactions between point-light agents

Predicting actions from non-verbal cues and using them to optimise one's response behaviour (i.e. interpersonal predictive coding) is essential in everyday social interactions. We aimed to investigate the neural correlates of different cognitive processes evolving over time during interpersonal predictive coding. Thirty-nine participants watched two agents depicted by moving point-light stimuli while an electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. One well-recognizable agent performed either a 'communicative' or an 'individual' action. The second agent either was blended into a cluster of noise dots (i.e. present) or was entirely replaced by noise dots (i.e. absent), which participants had to differentiate. EEG amplitude and coherence analyses for theta, alpha and beta frequency bands revealed a dynamic pattern unfolding over time: Watching communicative actions was associated with enhanced coupling within medial anterior regions involved in social and mentalising processes and with dorsolateral prefrontal activation indicating a higher deployment of cognitive resources. Trying to detect the agent in the cluster of noise dots without having seen communicative cues was related to enhanced coupling in posterior regions for social perception and visual processing. Observing an expected outcome was modulated by motor system activation. Finally, when the agent was detected correctly, activation in posterior areas for visual processing of socially relevant features was increased. Taken together, our results demonstrate that it is crucial to consider the temporal dynamics of social interactions and of their neural correlates to better understand interpersonal predictive coding. This could lead to optimised treatment approaches for individuals with problems in social interactions.

PLAViMoP database: A new continuously assessed and collaborative 3D point-light display dataset

It was more than 45 years ago that Gunnar Johansson invented the point-light display technique. This showed for the first time that kinematics is crucial for action recognition, and that humans are very sensitive to their conspecifics' movements. As a result, many of today's researchers use point-light displays to better understand the mechanisms behind this recognition ability. In this paper, we propose PLAViMoP, a new database of 3D point-light displays representing everyday human actions (global and fine-motor control movements), sports movements, facial expressions, interactions, and robotic movements. Access to the database is free, at https://plavimop.prd.fr/en/motions . Moreover, it incorporates a search engine to facilitate action retrieval. In this paper, we describe the construction, functioning, and assessment of the PLAViMoP database. Each sequence was analyzed according to four parameters: type of movement, movement label, sex of the actor, and age of the actor. We provide both the mean scores for each assessment of each point-light display, and the comparisons between the different categories of sequences. Our results are discussed in the light of the literature and the suitability of our stimuli for research and applications.

How are patterned movements stored in working memory?

Introduction

In this study, the change detection paradigm was used to study the working memory of patterned movements and the relationship of this type of memory with the visuospatial sketchpad in three experiments.

Methods

Experiment 1 measured participants' working memory capacity for patterned movements and explored the influence of stimulus type with indicators such as response time and accuracy rate. Experiments 2 and 3 explored the relationship between patterned movements and the visual and spatial subsystems, respectively.

Results

The results of Experiment 1 indicated that individuals can store 3-4 patterned movements in working memory; however, a change in stimulus format or an increase in memory load may decrease the speed and efficiency of working memory processing. The results of Experiment 2 showed that working memory and visual working memory are independent when processing patterned movements. The results of Experiment 3 showed that the working memory of patterned movements was affected by spatial working memory.

Discussion

Changes in stimulus type and memory load exerted different effects on the working memory capacity of participants. These results provide behavioral evidence that the storage of patterned movement information is independent of the visual subsystem but requires the spatial subsystem of the visuospatial sketchpad.

Life is in motion (through a chick's eye)

Cognitive scientists, social psychologists, computer scientists, neuroscientists, ethologists and many others have all wondered how brains detect and interpret the motion of living organisms. It appears that specific cues, incorporated into our brains by natural selection, serve to signal the presence of living organisms. A simple geometric figure such as a triangle put in motion with specific kinematic rules can look alive, and it can even seem to have intentions and goals. In this article, we survey decades of parallel investigations on the motion cues that drive animacy perception-the sensation that something is alive-in non-human animals, especially in precocial species, such as the domestic chick, to identify inborn biological predispositions. At the same time, we highlight the relevance of these studies for an understanding of human typical and atypical cognitive development.

Using EEG movement tagging to isolate brain responses coupled to biological movements

Detecting biological motion is essential for adaptive social behavior. Previous research has revealed the brain processes underlying this ability. However, brain activity during biological motion perception captures a multitude of processes. As a result, it is often unclear which processes reflect movement processing and which processes reflect secondary processes that build on movement processing. To address this issue, we developed a new approach to measure brain responses directly coupled to observed movements. Specifically, we showed 30 male and female adults a point-light walker moving at a pace of 2.4 Hz and used EEG frequency tagging to measure the brain response coupled to that pace ('movement tagging'). The results revealed a reliable response at the walking frequency that was reduced by two manipulations known to disrupt biological motion perception: phase scrambling and inversion. Interestingly, we also identified a brain response at half the walking frequency (i.e., 1.2 Hz), corresponding to the rate at which the individual dots completed a cycle. In contrast to the 2.4 Hz response, the response at 1.2 Hz was increased for scrambled (vs. unscrambled) walkers. These results show that frequency tagging can be used to capture the visual processing of biological movements and can dissociate between global (2.4 Hz) and local (1.2 Hz) processes involved in biological motion perception, at different frequencies of the brain signal.

Fetal blockade of nicotinic acetylcholine transmission causes autism-like impairment of biological motion preference in the neonatal chick

Several environmental chemicals are suspected risk factors for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including valproic acid (VPA) and pesticides acting on nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs), if administered during pregnancy. However, their target processes in fetal neuro-development are unknown. We report that the injection of VPA into the fetus impaired imprinting to an artificial object in neonatal chicks, while a predisposed preference for biological motion (BM) remained intact. Blockade of nAChRs acted oppositely, sparing imprinting and impairing BM preference. Beside ketamine and tubocurarine, significant effects of imidacloprid (a neonicotinoid insecticide) appeared at a dose ≤1 ppm. In accord with the behavioral dissociations, VPA enhanced histone acetylation in the primary cell culture of fetal telencephalon, whereas ketamine did not. VPA reduced the brain weight and the ratio of NeuN-positive cells (matured neurons) in the telencephalon of hatchlings, whereas ketamine/tubocurarine did not. Despite the distinct underlying mechanisms, both VPA and nAChR blockade similarly impaired imprinting to biological image composed of point-light animations. Furthermore, both impairments were abolished by postnatal bumetanide treatment, suggesting a common pathology underlying the social attachment malformation. Neurotransmission via nAChR is thus critical for the early social bond formation, which is hindered by ambient neonicotinoids through impaired visual predispositions for animate objects.

Emotion recognition dysfunction after anesthesia and cardiac surgery

Cognitive dysfunction after anesthesia and surgery has long been recognized. Recently, researchers provided empirical evidence for social cognition dysfunction (SCD) after anesthesia and surgery. In the present study, we concentrated on the deficits in emotion recognition, one of the most important clinical perspectives in SCD, in patients who underwent cardiac surgery. Biological motion (BM) was considered as the stimulus of interest, and patients' abilities of BM emotion perception and action perception before and after anesthesia and surgery were examined. In total, 60 adult patients (40-72 years old) completed the BM recognition task, which required them to label the types of actions and emotions of perceived BM. The results showed that while action perception remained intact after cardiac surgery, 18.3% of patients exhibited deficits in emotion perception, further confirming the existence of SCD after anesthesia and surgery.

Ties between reading faces, bodies, eyes, and autistic traits

While reading covered with masks faces during the COVID-19 pandemic, for efficient social interaction, we need to combine information from different sources such as the eyes (without faces hidden by masks) and bodies. This may be challenging for individuals with neuropsychiatric conditions, in particular, autism spectrum disorders. Here we examined whether reading of dynamic faces, bodies, and eyes are tied in a gender-specific way, and how these capabilities are related to autistic traits expression. Females and males accomplished a task with point-light faces along with a task with point-light body locomotion portraying different emotional expressions. They had to infer emotional content of displays. In addition, participants were administered the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, modified and Autism Spectrum Quotient questionnaire. The findings show that only in females, inferring emotions from dynamic bodies and faces are firmly linked, whereas in males, reading in the eyes is knotted with face reading. Strikingly, in neurotypical males only, accuracy of face, body, and eyes reading was negatively tied with autistic traits. The outcome points to gender-specific modes in social cognition: females rely upon merely dynamic cues while reading faces and bodies, whereas males most likely trust configural information. The findings are of value for examination of face and body language reading in neuropsychiatric conditions, in particular, autism, most of which are gender/sex-specific. This work suggests that if male individuals with autistic traits experience difficulties in reading covered with masks faces, these deficits may be unlikely compensated by reading (even dynamic) bodies and faces. By contrast, in females, reading covered faces as well as reading language of dynamic bodies and faces are not compulsorily connected to autistic traits preventing them from paying high costs for maladaptive social interaction.

Neural circuits underpinning face tuning in male depression

Reading bodies and faces is essential for efficient social interactions, though it may be thought-provoking for individuals with depression. Yet aberrations in the face sensitivity and underwriting neural circuits are not well understood, in particular, in male depression. Here, we use cutting-edge analyses of time course and dynamic topography of gamma oscillatory neuromagnetic cortical activity during administration of a task with Arcimboldo-like images. No difference in face tuning was found between individuals with depression and their neurotypical peers. Furthermore, this behavioral outcome nicely dovetails with magnetoencephalographic data: at early processing stages, the gamma oscillatory response to images resembling a face was rather similar in patients and controls. These bursts originated primarily from the right medioventral occipital cortex and lateral occipital cortex. At later processing stages, however, its topography altered remarkably in depression with profound engagement of the frontal circuits. Yet the primary difference in depressive individuals as compared with their neurotypical peers occurred over the left middle temporal cortices, a part of the social brain, engaged in feature integration and meaning retrieval. The outcome suggests compensatory recruitment of neural resources in male depression.

Attentional influences on neural processing of biological motion in typically developing children and those on the autism spectrum

BACKGROUND

Biological motion imparts rich information related to the movement, actions, intentions and affective state of others, which can provide foundational support for various aspects of social cognition and behavior. Given that atypical social communication and cognition are hallmark symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), many have theorized that a potential source of this deficit may lie in dysfunctional neural mechanisms of biological motion processing. Synthesis of existing literature provides some support for biological motion processing deficits in autism spectrum disorder, although high study heterogeneity and inconsistent findings complicate interpretation. Here, we attempted to reconcile some of this residual controversy by investigating a possible modulating role for attention in biological motion processing in ASD.

METHODS

We employed high-density electroencephalographic recordings while participants observed point-light displays of upright, inverted and scrambled biological motion under two task conditions to explore spatiotemporal dynamics of intentional and unintentional biological motion processing in children and adolescents with ASD (n = 27), comparing them to a control cohort of neurotypical (NT) participants (n = 35).

RESULTS

Behaviorally, ASD participants were able to discriminate biological motion with similar accuracy to NT controls. However, electrophysiologic investigation revealed reduced automatic selective processing of upright biologic versus scrambled motion stimuli in ASD relative to NT individuals, which was ameliorated when task demands required explicit attention to biological motion. Additionally, we observed distinctive patterns of covariance between visual potentials evoked by biological motion and functional social ability, such that Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale-Socialization domain scores were differentially associated with biological motion processing in the N1 period in the ASD but not the NT group.

LIMITATIONS

The cross-sectional design of this study does not allow us to definitively answer the question of whether developmental differences in attention to biological motion cause disruption in social communication, and the sample was limited to children with average or above cognitive ability.

CONCLUSIONS

Together, these data suggest that individuals with ASD are able to discriminate, with explicit attention, biological from non-biological motion but demonstrate diminished automatic neural specificity for biological motion processing, which may have cascading implications for the development of higher-order social cognition.

Three- and six-year-old children are sensitive to natural body expressions of emotion: An event-related potential emotional priming study

Body movements provide a rich source of emotional information during social interactions. Although the ability to perceive biological motion cues related to those movements begins to develop during infancy, processing those cues to identify emotions likely continues to develop into childhood. Previous studies used posed or exaggerated body movements, which might not reflect the kind of body expressions children experience. The current study used an event-related potential (ERP) priming paradigm to investigate the development of emotion recognition from more naturalistic body movements. Point-light displays (PLDs) of male adult bodies expressing happy or angry emotional movements while narrating a story were used as prime stimuli, whereas audio recordings of the words "happy" and "angry" spoken with an emotionally neutral prosody were used as targets. We recorded the ERPs time-locked to the onset of the auditory target from 3- and 6-year-old children, and we compared amplitude and latency of the N300 and N400 responses between the two age groups in the different prime-target conditions. There was an overall effect of prime for the N300 amplitude, with more negative-going responses for happy PLDs compared with angry PLDs. There was also an interaction between prime and target for the N300 latency, suggesting that all children were sensitive to the emotional congruency between body movements and words. For the N400 component, there was only an interaction among age, prime, and target for latency, suggesting an age-dependent modulation of this component when prime and target did not match in emotional information. Overall, our results suggest that the emergence of more complex emotion processing of body expressions occurs around 6 years of age, but it is not fully developed at this point in ontogeny.

Resourceful Event-Predictive Inference: The Nature of Cognitive Effort

Pursuing a precise, focused train of thought requires cognitive effort. Even more effort is necessary when more alternatives need to be considered or when the imagined situation becomes more complex. Cognitive resources available to us limit the cognitive effort we can spend. In line with previous work, an information-theoretic, Bayesian brain approach to cognitive effort is pursued: to solve tasks in our environment, our brain needs to invest information, that is, negative entropy, to impose structure, or focus, away from a uniform structure or other task-incompatible, latent structures. To get a more complete formalization of cognitive effort, a resourceful event-predictive inference model (REPI) is introduced, which offers computational and algorithmic explanations about the latent structure of our generative models, the active inference dynamics that unfold within, and the cognitive effort required to steer the dynamics-to, for example, purposefully process sensory signals, decide on responses, and invoke their execution. REPI suggests that we invest cognitive resources to infer preparatory priors, activate responses, and anticipate action consequences. Due to our limited resources, though, the inference dynamics are prone to task-irrelevant distractions. For example, the task-irrelevant side of the imperative stimulus causes the Simon effect and, due to similar reasons, we fail to optimally switch between tasks. An actual model implementation simulates such task interactions and offers first estimates of the involved cognitive effort. The approach may be further studied and promises to offer deeper explanations about why we get quickly exhausted from multitasking, how we are influenced by irrelevant stimulus modalities, why we exhibit magnitude interference, and, during social interactions, why we often fail to take the perspective of others into account.

Reading language of the eyes

The need for assessment of social skills in clinical and neurotypical populations has led to the widespread, and still increasing use of the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test' (RMET) developed more than two decades ago by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues for evaluation of social cognition in autism. By analyzing most recent clinical and brain imaging data, we illuminate a set of factors decisive for using the RMET. Converging evidence indicates: (i) In neurotypical individuals, RMET scores are tightly correlated with other social skills (empathy, emotional intelligence, and body language reading); (ii) The RMET assesses recognition of facial affect, but also heavily relies on receptive language skills, semantic knowledge, and memory; (iii) RMET performance is underwritten by the large-scale ensembles of neural networks well-outside the social brain; (iv) The RMET is limited in its capacity to differentiate between neuropsychiatric conditions as well as between stages and severity of a single disorder, though it reliably distinguishes individuals with altered social cognition or elevated pathological traits from neurotypical persons; (v) Merely gender (as a social construct) rather than neurobiological sex influences performance on the RMET; (vi) RMET scores do not substantially decline in healthy aging, and they are higher with higher education level, cognitive abilities, literacy, and mental well-being; (vii) Accuracy on the RMET, and engagement of the social brain, are greater when emotions are expressed and recognized by individuals with similar cultural/ethnic background. Further research is required to better inform usage of the RMET as a tool for swift and reliable examination of social cognition. In light of comparable visual input from the RMET images and faces covered by masks due to COVID-19 regulations, the analysis is of value for keeping efficient social interaction during the current pandemic, in particular, in professional settings related to social communication.

A two-stage framework for neural processing of biological motion

It remains to be understood how biological motion is hierarchically computed, from discrimination of local biological motion animacy to global dynamic body perception. Here, we addressed this functional separation of the correlates of the perception of local biological motion from perception of global motion of a body. We hypothesized that local biological motion processing can be isolated, by using a single dot motion perceptual decision paradigm featuring the biomechanical details of local realistic motion of a single joint. To ensure that we were indeed tackling processing of biological motion properties we used a discrimination instead of detection task. We discovered using representational similarity analysis that two key early dorsal and two ventral stream regions (visual motion selective hMT+ and V3A, extrastriate body area EBA and a region within fusiform gyrus FFG) showed robust and separable signals related to encoding of local biological motion and global motion-mediated shape. These signals reflected two independent processing stages, as revealed by representational similarity analysis and deconvolution of fMRI responses to each motion pattern. This study showed that higher level pSTS encodes both classes of biological motion in a similar way, revealing a higher-level integrative stage, reflecting scale independent biological motion perception. Our results reveal a two-stage framework for neural computation of biological motion, with an independent contribution of dorsal and ventral regions for the initial stage.

Decoding point-light displays and fully visible hand grasping actions within the action observation network

Action observation typically recruits visual areas and dorsal and ventral sectors of the parietal and premotor cortex. This network has been collectively termed as extended action observation network (eAON). Within this network, the elaboration of kinematic aspects of biological motion is crucial. Previous studies investigated these aspects by presenting subjects with point-light displays (PLDs) videos of whole-body movements, showing the recruitment of some of the eAON areas. However, studies focused on cortical activation during observation of PLDs grasping actions are lacking. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we assessed the activation of eAON in healthy participants during the observation of both PLDs and fully visible hand grasping actions, excluding confounding effects due to low-level visual features, motion, and context. Results showed that the observation of PLDs grasping stimuli elicited a bilateral activation of the eAON. Region of interest analyses performed on visual and sensorimotor areas showed no significant differences in signal intensity between PLDs and fully visible experimental conditions, indicating that both conditions evoked a similar motor resonance mechanism. Multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) revealed significant decoding of PLDs and fully visible grasping observation conditions in occipital, parietal, and premotor areas belonging to eAON. Data show that kinematic features conveyed by PLDs stimuli are sufficient to elicit a complete action representation, suggesting that these features can be disentangled within the eAON from the features usually characterizing fully visible actions. PLDs stimuli could be useful in assessing which areas are recruited, when only kinematic cues are available, for action recognition, imitation, and motor learning.

Impaired Biological Motion Processing and Motor Skills in Adults with Autistic Traits

The present study explored the relationship between biological motion (BioM) processing, motor skills, and autistic traits within a non-clinical sample of 621 adults (18-73 years, 51.8% female). Results indicated that adults with greater autistic traits also endorsed difficulties associated with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) in childhood and adulthood. Traits associated with autism spectrum disorder and DCD were predictive of BioM processing abilities. The results also revealed sex differences in DCD, autistic traits, and BioM processing. Overall, these findings suggest that adults with greater autistic traits experience both deficits in motor activities as well as underlying motor perceptual abilities.

Three Months-Old' Preferences for Biological Motion Configuration and Its Subsequent Decline

To perceive, identify and understand the action of others, it is essential to perceptually organize individual and local moving body parts (such as limbs) into the whole configuration of a human body in action. Configural processing-processing the relations among features or parts of a stimulus-is a fundamental ability in the perception of several important social stimuli, such as faces or biological motion. Despite this, we know very little about how human infants develop the ability to perceive and prefer configural relations in biological motion. We present two preferential looking experiments (one cross-sectional and one longitudinal) measuring infants' preferential attention between a coherent motion configuration of a person walking vs. a scrambled point-light walker (i.e., a stimulus in which all configural relations were removed, thus, in which the perception of a person is impossible). We found that three-month-old infants prefer a coherent point-light walker in relation to a scrambled display, but both five- and seven-month-old infants do not show any preference. We discuss our findings in terms of the different perceptual, attentional, motor, and brain processes available at each age group, and how they dynamically interact with selective attention toward the coherent and socially relevant motion of a person walking during our first year of life.

Seeing a Bayesian ghost: Sensorimotor activation leads to an illusory social perception

Based on our prior experiences we form social expectations and anticipate another person’s response. Under certain conditions, these expectations can be so strong that they lead to illusory perception of another person who is actually not there (i.e., seeing a Bayesian ghost). We used EEG to investigate the neural correlates of such illusory social perception. Our results showed that activation of the premotor cortex predicted the occurrence of the Bayesian ghost, whereas its actual appearance was later accompanied by activation in sensorimotor and adjacent parietal regions. These findings confirm that our perception of others is so strongly affected by prior expectations, in such a way they can prompt illusory social perceptions associated with activity change in brain regions relevant for action perception. They also contribute to a better understanding of social interaction in healthy individuals as well as persons with mental illnesses, which can be characterized by illusory perception and social interaction difficulties.

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Expecting a response to a social action can lead to an illusion of another person

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The brain does not merely respond to social signals but anticipates social behavior

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Sensorimotor activity indicates top-down predictions that outweigh sensory input

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Illusory social perception is associated with sensorimotor and parietal activity

Eye-tracking-based experimental paradigm to assess social-emotional abilities in young individuals with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities

Individuals with Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities (PIMD) experience a combination of severe cognitive and motor impairments frequently associated with additional sensory deficits and numerous medical disorders. The purpose of the present study was to propose an experimental paradigm based on eye-tracking that combines various pre-existing tasks from infancy research as an assessment tool. This would enable the investigation of social-emotional abilities in nine young individuals with PIMD through their visual preferences for different types of stimuli. The first objective was to test the feasibility of this paradigm, by expecting individuals to look more at the tasks’ presentation screen than elsewhere during its implementation. The second objective was to investigate whether PIMD individuals exhibit visual preferences for (a) biological (vs. non-biological) motion, (b) socially salient (vs. non-social) scenes, (c) the facial area of the eyes (vs. the mouth), (d) happy (vs. angry) faces, (e) objects of joint attention (vs. non-looked at ones), and for (f) prosocial (vs. anti-social) behaviors similar to those of a control group of typically developing children aged two years on average. Overall, the feasibility of this paradigm proved to be good, resulting in high individual looking rates that were not affected by the presentation or the content of the tasks. Analyses of individual social-emotional abilities, supported by the visual preference patterns of each PIMD individual, firstly revealed strong—but expected—variability both within and between subjects, and secondly highlighted some individual task-specific abilities although few similarities between these individual results and those of the control group were found. These findings underline the great relevance of using this type of paradigm for assessing PIMD individuals and thus contribute to a better understanding of their social and emotional development.

From Hemispheric Asymmetry through Sensorimotor Experiences to Cognitive Outcomes in Children with Cerebral Palsy

Recent neuroimaging studies allowed us to explore abnormal brain structures and interhemispheric connectivity in children with cerebral palsy (CP). Behavioral researchers have long reported that children with CP exhibit suboptimal performance in different cognitive domains (e.g., receptive and expressive language skills, reading, mental imagery, spatial processing, subitizing, math, and executive functions). However, there has been very limited cross-domain research involving these two areas of scientific inquiry. To stimulate such research, this perspective paper proposes some possible neurological mechanisms involved in the cognitive delays and impairments in children with CP. Additionally, the paper examines the ways motor and sensorimotor experience during the development of these neural substrates could enable more optimal development for children with CP. Understanding these developmental mechanisms could guide more effective interventions to promote the development of both sensorimotor and cognitive skills in children with CP.

Distinct cerebellar regions for body motion discrimination

Visual processing of human movements is critical for adaptive social behavior. Cerebellar activations have been observed during biological motion discrimination in prior neuroimaging studies, and cerebellar lesions may be detrimental for this task. However, whether the cerebellum plays a causal role in biological motion discrimination has never been tested. Here, we addressed this issue in three different experiments by interfering with the posterior cerebellar lobe using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during a biological discrimination task. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found that TMS delivered at onset of the visual stimuli over the vermis (vermal lobule VI), but not over the left cerebellar hemisphere (left lobule VI/Crus I), interfered with participants' ability to distinguish biological from scrambled motion compared to stimulation of a control site (vertex). Interestingly, when stimulation was delivered at a later time point (300 ms after stimulus onset), participants performed worse when TMS was delivered over the left cerebellar hemisphere compared to the vermis and the vertex (Experiment 3). Our data show that the posterior cerebellum is causally involved in biological motion discrimination and suggest that different sectors of the posterior cerebellar lobe may contribute to the task at different time points.

The Interprocessual-Self Theory in Support of Human Neuroscience Studies

Rather than occurring abstractly (autonomously), ethical growth occurs in interpersonal relationships (IRs). It requires optimally functioning cognitive processes [attention, working memory (WM), episodic/autobiographical memory (AM), inhibition, flexibility, among others], emotional processes (physical contact, motivation, and empathy), processes surrounding ethical, intimacy, and identity issues, and other psychological processes (self-knowledge, integration, and the capacity for agency). Without intending to be reductionist, we believe that these aspects are essential for optimally engaging in IRs and for the personal constitution. While they are all integrated into our daily life, in research and academic work, it is hard to see how they are integrated. Thus, we need better theoretical frameworks for studying them. That study and integration thereof are undertaken differently depending on different views of what it means to live as a human being. We rely on neuroscientific data to support the chosen theory to offer knowledge to understand human beings and interpersonal relational growth. We should of course note that to describe what makes up the uniqueness of being, acting, and growing as a human person involves something much more profound which requires too, a methodology that opens the way for a theory of the person that responds to the concerns of philosophy and philosophical anthropology from many disciplines and methods (Orón Semper, 2015; Polo, 2015), but this is outside the scope of this study. With these in mind, this article aims to introduce a new explanatory framework, called the Interprocessual-self (IPS), for the neuroscientific findings that allow for a holistic consideration of the previously mentioned processes. Contributing to the knowledge of personal growth and avoiding a reductionist view, we first offer a general description of the research that supports the interrelation between personal virtue in IRs and relevant cognitive, emotional, and ethic-moral processes. This reveals how relationships allow people to relate ethically and grow as persons. We include conceptualizations and descriptions of their neural bases. Secondly, with the IPS model, we explore neuroscientific findings regarding self-knowledge, integration, and agency, all psychological processes that stimulate inner exploration of the self concerning the other. We find that these fundamental conditions can be understood from IPS theory. Finally, we explore situations that involve the integration of two levels, namely the interpersonal one and the social contexts of relationships.

Respiratory function modulated during execution, observation, and imagination of walking via SII

The Mirror Neurons System (MNS) consists of brain areas active during actions execution, as well as observation-imagination of the same actions. MNS represents a potential mechanism by which we understand other's action goals. We investigated MNS activation for legs actions, and its interaction with the autonomic nervous system. We performed a physiological and fMRI investigation on the common neural structures recruited during the execution, observation, and imagination of walking, and their effects on respiratory activity. Bilateral SMA were activated by all three tasks, suggesting that these areas are responsible for the core of the MNS effect for walking. Moreover, we observed in bilateral parietal opercula (OP1, secondary somatosensory cortex-SII) evidence of an MNS subtending walking execution-observation-imagination that also modulated the respiratory function. We suggest that SII, in modulating the vegetative response during motor activity but also during observation-imagination, consists of a re-enacting function which facilitates the understanding of motor actions.

Functional Convergence of Motor and Social Processes in Lobule IV/V of the Mouse Cerebellum

Topographic organization of the cerebellum is largely segregated into the anterior and posterior lobes that represent its "motor" and "non-motor" functions, respectively. Although patients with damage to the anterior cerebellum often exhibit motor deficits, it remains unclear whether and how such an injury affects cognitive and social behaviors. To address this, we perturbed the activity of major anterior lobule IV/V in mice by either neurotoxic lesion or chemogenetic excitation of Purkinje cells in the cerebellar cortex. We found that both of the manipulations impaired motor coordination, but not general locomotion or anxiety-related behavior. The lesioned animals showed memory deficits in object recognition and social-associative recognition tests, which were confounded by a lack of exploration. Chemogenetic excitation of Purkinje cells disrupted the animals' social approach in a less-preferred context and social memory, without affecting their overall exploration and object-based memory. In a free social interaction test, the two groups exhibited less interaction with a stranger conspecific. Subsequent c-Fos imaging indicated that decreased neuronal activities in the medial prefrontal cortex, hippocampal dentate gyrus, parahippocampal cortices, and basolateral amygdala, as well as disorganized modular structures of the brain networks might underlie the reduced social interaction. These findings suggest that the anterior cerebellum plays an intricate role in processing motor, cognitive, and social functions.