title: Neural representations of kinematic laws of motion: evidence for action-perception coupling.
abstract: Behavioral and modeling studies have established that curved and drawing human hand movements obey the 2/3 power law, which dictates a strong coupling between movement curvature and velocity. Human motion perception seems to reflect this constraint. The functional MRI study reported here demonstrates that the brain's response to this law of motion is much stronger and more widespread than to other types of motion. Compliance with this law is reflected in the activation of a large network of brain areas subserving motor production, visual motion processing, and action observation functions. Hence, these results strongly support the notion of similar neural coding for motion perception and production. These findings suggest that cortical motion representations are optimally tuned to the kinematic and geometrical invariants characterizing biological actions.
authors: Departments of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Neurobiology, and Physics of Complex Systems, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors: Eran
authors: E
authors: Dayan
authors: Antonino
authors: A
authors: Casile
authors: Nava
authors: N
authors: Levit-Binnun
authors: Martin A
authors: MA
authors: Giese
authors: Talma
authors: T
authors: Hendler
authors: Tamar
authors: T
authors: Flash
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D009068:Movement