Final Report Summary - PARIETALACTION (The human Parietal Lobe)
The parietalaction project reached its main goal: understanding the human brain mechanisms underlying the perception of others actions, and more particular, the leading role the parietal cortex plays in this function. In short, observation of others actions is a visual function (unlike what is assumed by the mirror theory) performed in a distributed way by several sensori-motor planning regions of the parietal cortex. This perceptual function arose from a requirement of the sensori-motor transformations: visual inputs about others’ actions contribute to the planning of actions. In humans this visual function evolved further and is directly linked to semantic processing, providing meaning to action verbs.
Two minor goals were also reached: 1) to show that stereo had a limited effect on the observation of others’ actions, which depends on the premotor cortex, and 2) to confirm the role of the anterior Supramarginal gyrus (aSMG) in the observation of tool actions and demonstrate the existence of several low-level regions specifically devoted to tool-motion. Many of the results are still unpublished and therefore the summary has to remain very general.
Two minor goals were also reached: 1) to show that stereo had a limited effect on the observation of others’ actions, which depends on the premotor cortex, and 2) to confirm the role of the anterior Supramarginal gyrus (aSMG) in the observation of tool actions and demonstrate the existence of several low-level regions specifically devoted to tool-motion. Many of the results are still unpublished and therefore the summary has to remain very general.