title: Neural and Computational Mechanisms of Action Processing: Interaction between Visual and Motor Representations.
abstract: Action recognition has received enormous interest in the field of neuroscience over the last two decades. In spite of this interest, the knowledge in terms of fundamental neural mechanisms that provide constraints for underlying computations remains rather limited. This fact stands in contrast with a wide variety of speculative theories about how action recognition might work. This review focuses on new fundamental electrophysiological results in monkeys, which provide constraints for the detailed underlying computations. In addition, we review models for action recognition and processing that have concrete mathematical implementations, as opposed to conceptual models. We think that only such implemented models can be meaningfully linked quantitatively to physiological data and have a potential to narrow down the many possible computational explanations for action recognition. In addition, only concrete implementations allow judging whether postulated computational concepts have a feasible implementation in terms of realistic neural circuits.
authors.affiliation: Section on Computational Sensomotorics, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research & Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University Clinic Tübingen, Otfried-Müller Str. 25, 72076 Tübingen, Germany. Electronic address: martin.giese@uni-tuebingen.de.
authors.forename: Martin A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Giese
authors.affiliation: IIT Brain Center for Social and Motor Cognition, 43100, Parma, Italy; Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, 43100 Parma, Italy. Electronic address: giacomo.rizzolatti@unipr.it.
authors.forename: Giacomo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rizzolatti
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D000882:Haplorhini; D059167:Mirror Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology