Your hand movements in my somatosensory cortex: a visuo-kinesthetic function in human area 2.
Does viewing someone's actions activate a viewer's somatosensory cortex? We tested if visual information of limb movements activated limb sections in somatosensory areas that are normally engaged in kinesthetic processing of the limb. We showed, with functional magnetic resonance imaging in 17 right-handed healthy subjects, that passive observation of flexion-extension movements of an experimenter's right hand activated the observer's contralateral hand section of area 2 which is involved in kinesthetic processing of right hand movements. This could be interpreted as a pragmatic function of the brain that permits visual information to reach the somatosensory area, and suggests human area 2 has an association function between kinesthesia and vision.
Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan.
Yutaka
Y
Oouchida
Tomohisa
T
Okada
Tokuro
T
Nakashima
Michikazu
M
Matsumura
Norihiro
N
Sadato
Eiichi
E
Naito
D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007699:Kinesthesis / Q000502:physiology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D013003:Somatosensory Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*