The limits of action emulation – A psychophysiological investigation in athletes and patients with autism spectrum disorder

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“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” So said Wayne Gretzky, one of the best ice hockey players of all times. This quote makes clear the importance of precise actions and movements, and their prediction in situations with constraints in time and space. To control and execute efficient and successful actions, one has to be able to conduct the actions on a high skill level and to predict the outcomes of one’s own actions. In addition, the result of the interaction with the environment has to be considered. In other words, to achieve a goal, external and internal factors must be geared toward a prospective or desired goal state. To stick with our Gretzky example, this would mean that actions might be influenced by internal factors such as talent, training or skill level, and accuracy or by external factors such as the opponent team, speed of the hockey players and/or puck, or noise and lighting conditions in the arena. Investigating how such interactions are implemented on a neurophysiological level requires consideration of different theoretical frameworks. We argue that a psychophysiological perspective on embodied cognition, that is, action emulation, might provide deeper insight into this question.The goal of this project is to put forward a psychophysiological perspective on action emulation and to test the limits of action emulation in two model conditions, that is, athletes and high-functioning patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as two extremes lying on opposite sides of a continuum: athletes with highly functional action emulation and patients with ASD with highly dysfunctional action emulation. We will compare athletes from sports such as tennis and badminton to a typically functioning non-athlete matched sample. Moreover, we will examine high-functioning patients with ASD. Up to now, it has been unclear how exactly fronto-parietal brain regions support action emulation. Our objectives are twofold in this regard: First, we aim to show how action emulation is grounded on a psychophysiological level. Second, we aim to test whether and how the dorsal frontoparietal network is at the core of action emulation. We will focus on a basic aspect of action emulation, that is, online prediction in motor control. Here, we test execution, prediction, and emulation of action. In each of the investigated populations, we will use transcranial magnetic stimulation methods to delineate the “causal” relevance of the functional neuroanatomical structures underlying action emulation.