title: Why I tense up when you watch me: Inferior parietal cortex mediates an audience's influence on motor performance.
abstract: The presence of an evaluative audience can alter skilled motor performance through changes in force output. To investigate how this is mediated within the brain, we emulated real-time social monitoring of participants' performance of a fine grip task during functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging. We observed an increase in force output during social evaluation that was accompanied by focal reductions in activity within bilateral inferior parietal cortex. Moreover, deactivation of the left inferior parietal cortex predicted both inter- and intra-individual differences in socially-induced change in grip force. Social evaluation also enhanced activation within the posterior superior temporal sulcus, which conveys visual information about others' actions to the inferior parietal cortex. Interestingly, functional connectivity between these two regions was attenuated by social evaluation. Our data suggest that social evaluation can vary force output through the altered engagement of inferior parietal cortex; a region implicated in sensorimotor integration necessary for object manipulation, and a component of the action-observation network which integrates and facilitates performance of observed actions. Social-evaluative situations may induce high-level representational incoherence between one's own intentioned action and the perceived intention of others which, by uncoupling the dynamics of sensorimotor facilitation, could ultimately perturbe motor output.
authors.affiliation: Human Informatics Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, 305-8566, Japan.|Automotive Human Factors Research Center, AIST, Tsukuba, 305-8566, Japan.|Department of Psychiatry, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, BN1 9RR, United Kingdom.|Department of Life Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 153-8902, Japan.|Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Osaka, 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Michiko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yoshie
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, BN1 9RR, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Yoko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nagai
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, BN1 9RR, United Kingdom.|Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Hugo D
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Critchley
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, BN1 9RR, United Kingdom.|Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Neil A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Harrison
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009043:Motor Activity; D009119:Muscle Contraction; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D060805:Performance Anxiety; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D055815:Young Adult