Social events – An event coding approach to echophenomena in GTS

白斑属于GTS的核心症状，至少有20%-30%的GTS患者存在，并与最常见的ADHD和OCD并存的GTS区分开来。GTS中的回声包括回声和回声，前者指的是自动模仿他人的动作，后者指的是声音和语言的重复。虽然生态现象现象很常见，但只有很少的经验性工作描述了GTS自动模仿背后的认知和神经机制。动作和知觉的常见编码方法，包括事件编码理论(TEC)，是自动模仿概念化的合适候选者，可以被认为是动作-知觉匹配的主要例子。这一理论框架和行为证据与十年来对“镜像神经系统”的研究相吻合，“镜像神经系统”是行动和感知联合表征的假定神经生物学基础。事实证明，这种联合表征不仅与理解他人的行为有关，而且与理解他人的感觉和情绪有关。这提出了这样的问题：GTS中的生态现象是否与(I)镜像神经系统的功能改变有关，(Ii)更广泛地说，与他人感觉和情绪的神经表征改变有关。在这个项目中，我们的目标是通过一系列的脑电和功能磁共振研究来解决这些问题。

Echophenomena belong to the core symptoms of GTS, being present in at least 20-30% of GTS patients and distinguishing ‘pure’ GTS from the most common comorbidities ADHD and OCD. Echophenomena in GTS comprise both echopraxia, denoting the automatic imitation of others’ actions, and echolalia, referring to repetitions of sounds and language. Although echophenomena are very common, there is only little empirical work delineating the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying automatic imitation in GTS. Common coding approaches to action and perception including the Theory of Event Coding (TEC) are suitable candidates to conceptualize automatic imitation, which can be considered the prime example of action-perception matching. This theoretical framework and behavioural evidence is dovetailed by a decade of research on the ‘mirror neuron system’ as the putative neurobiological basis of a joint representation of action and perception. Such joint representation has been demonstrated to be relevant not only for understanding others’ actions, but also others’ sensations and emotions. This raises the questions whether echophenomena in GTS relate (i) to altered functioning of the mirror neuron system and (ii) more generally to an altered neural representation of others’ sensations and emotions. With the present project, we aim to address these questions with a series of EEG- and fMRI-studies.