Identifying the What, Why, and How of an Observed Action: An fMRI Study of Mentalizing and Mechanizing during Action Observation

■ Humans commonly understand the unobservable mental states of others by observing their actions. Embodied simulation theories suggest that this ability may be based in areas of the fronto-parietal mirror neuron system, yet neuroimaging studies that explicitly investigate the human ability to draw mental state inferences point to the involvement of a “mentalizing” system consisting of regions that do not overlap with the mirror neuron system. For the present study, we developed a novel action identification paradigm that allowed us to explicitly investigate the neural bases of mentalizing observed actions. Across repeated viewings of a set of ecologically valid video clips of ordinary human actions, we manipulated the extent to which participants identified the unobservable mental states of the actor (mentalizing) or the observable mechanics of their behavior (mechanizing). Although areas of the mirror neuron system did show an enhanced response during action identification, its...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: JOCN
• Authors: Robert P. Spunt, Ajay B. Satpute, Matthew D. Lieberman
• Keywords: JOCN 2011, Mirror Neuron System, Neuroimaging Studies, Posterior Cingulate Cortex