between body and action perception revealed

[Guest guest]

Link between body and action perception revealed

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=31097

25 Sep 2005

Research appears in October 2005 Nature Neuroscience (Newark)-

Psychology researchers have long understood and accepted the

importance of an individual's brain activity in motor areas when

interpreting the actions of others. However, much less was known

about the role the body plays in helping individuals process and

understand the same information. With the help of two patients

suffering from an extremely rare degenerative neurological condition,

a Rutgers-Newark Psychology Professor and his team of researchers

have established that the body plays a significant role in helping

humans to perceive and understand the actions of others.

In the article, " Understanding Another's Expectation from Action: The

Role of Peripheral Sensation, " that will appear in the October 2005

issue of Nature Neuroscience, Rutgers-Newark Psychology Professor

Guenther Knoblich is among a group of researchers who contend that

individuals use the human body's senses to understand others actions

and expectations. The researchers reached this conclusion by

performing experiments with two individuals suffering from the rare

neurological disorder of selective and complete haptic

deafferentiation due to sensory neuronopathy. The participants are

the only two known individuals in the world whose sense of touch and

body movement was completely eradicated by the degenerative disease.

The individuals participated in tasks that tested their ability to

gauge the weight of boxes which were lifted by other individuals and

their ability to infer weight expectations of the observed

individuals. Their performance was compared against a control group

comprised of healthy individuals.

" In order for an individual to perform a motor activity simulation,

you need to know how it feels to perform the action, " Knoblich

notes. " The two deafferented individuals do not feel their bodies.

They must see their bodies to perform the simplest actions, such as

standing upright. We asked whether their lack of body perception

would also affect their ability simulate others' actions while

observing them. "

The tasks involved individuals observing someone lifting a box and

attempting to determine and report the object's weight. In some of

the instances, the individuals doing the lifting were correctly

informed of the boxes weight. In other instances, investigators

misled the lifting person about the weight of the box. The patients

and control group viewed videos and afterwards either estimated the

weight of the box or reported whether or not they thought that the

person lifting the box was deceived beforehand about its weight.

" We observed that there was no difference in the responses when the

two groups were asked to estimate the object's weight, " Knoblich

explained. " However, when performing the expectation task and asked

to determine whether or not the person lifting the object was

deceived about its weight, the patients couldn't do it. "

According to Knoblich, the patients were unable to accurately respond

to the expectation task because they could not perform a motor

simulation. However, they were fully able to process the simple

perceptual cues which indicate the weight of the object. Knoblich

said these results go a long way toward establishing the view that

the body's senses are critical to a human's ability to understand the

actions and expectations of others.

" It solidifies the new embodiment view that is becoming increasingly

popular in the cognitive and neurosciences, " Knoblich notes. " It is

interesting that there seem to be parallel developments in science

and art. While science questions the assumption that human cognition

can be viewed as disembodied, computer-like information processing,

many contemporary visual artists and performers seem to move away

from abstraction to re-discover the human body as an object of art. "

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

http://www.rutgers.edu

[Guest guest]

That was very interesting Gretchen. I always read the articles and so much more

makes sense. Thanks.

)