Our Approach

AMAOS aims to further investigate the neural correlates of assigning meaning to the actions of other subjects. In accordance with the ‘Mental Simulation Theory’ and in contrast to the ‘Mirror Neuron Theory’ we demonstrated in human and non-human primates that the execution and observation/recognition of a given action involve the same representational cognitive domain consisting of extensively overlapping sensory-motor neural networks. Indeed, several existing results indicate that binding codes between actual and noetic motor processes is a fundamental modus operandi of the brain.

AMAOS will explore which characteristics of the action are critical for its recognition by the observer. Recent neurophysiological results indicate that the activity of mirror neurons is correlated with action kinematics both during action-execution and action-observation. Therefore, we will use fMRI in humans to study how actions are represented in the entire human brain in general, and in mirror neuron areas in particular. To this end, we will perform double dissociation fMRI experiments in humans, to reveal which components of the brain network activated both for execution and observation of the same action are affected by (i) actions that have the same goals but different kinematics and (ii) actions that have the same kinematics but different goals.

Finally, brain-behavior correlations will be conducted to test the hypothesis that the degree of activation in each voxel cluster identified in either the ‘conjunction’ or the ‘subtraction’ analyses predicts individual performance on a series of cognitive tasks performed outside the MRI scanner.