Doctoral Dissertation Research: Imaging Brain Areas Involved in Biological Motion Perception

人类在视觉上识别他人的行为是非常熟练的，即使描绘这些行为的光学信息被减少到附着在个人关节上的稀疏光点集合。在这些“点光”动画中，只有将相关的运动信号在空间和时间上进行整合，才能恢复对身体动作的准确感知。脑成像研究表明，当人们看到这些点光动画所描绘的人类活动时，后颞沟腹侧的一个区域变得活跃。本项目将研究后STS的活动水平与与观看生物运动相关的知觉体验质量之间的关系。观察者将观看生物运动动画的单次试验，这些动画的连贯性范围从完全生物到完全混乱，并将根据感知到的连贯性对它们进行评级。实验还将检验后路STS在多大程度上专门用于人体全身运动。当观察者观看动物运动、手部运动和面部运动的点光动画时，将测量神经活动。最后，后STS的解剖位置非常接近与听觉有关的神经区域。如果后侧STS位于多模态皮层区域，那么将测量来自STS的神经信号可以被一致或不一致的听觉和视觉事件调节的程度。

Humans are incredibly skilled at visually recognizing the actions of others, even when the optical information portraying those actions is reduced to a sparse collection of light points attached to the individual's joints. In these "point-light" animations, accurate perception of body movements can only be recovered from the integration of the associated motion signals over space and time. Brain imaging research has disclosed that a region on the ventral bank of the posterior temporal sulcus (posterior STS) becomes active when people view human activity portrayed by these point-light animations. This project will examine the relationship between activity levels in posterior STS and the quality of the perceptual experience associated with viewing biological motion. Observers will view single trials of biological motion animations that range in coherence from completely biological to completely scrambled and will rate them according to perceived coherence. The experiments will also examine the extent to which posterior STS is specialized for whole-body human movement. Measures of neural activity will be taken as observers view point-light animations of animal motion, hand movements and face movements. Finally, the anatomical location of posterior STS is quite near neural areas involved in auditory perception. If posterior STS lies within multi-modal cortical areas, then measures will be made of the extent to which neural signals originating from STS can be modulated by congruent versus incongruent auditory and visual events.