The Inhibition of Imitative Response Tendencies

doi:10.1006/nimg.2001.0944

NeuroImage

Volume 14, Issue 6, December 2001, Pages 1416-1423

https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2001.0944 Get rights and content

Abstract

Recent neurocognitive studies show that perception and execution of actions are intimately linked. The mere observation of an action seems to evoke a tendency to execute that action. Since such imitative response tendencies are not adaptive in many everyday situations imitative response tendencies usually have to be inhibited. These inhibitory processes have never been investigated using brain imaging techniques. Former work on response inhibition and interference control has focused on paradigms such as the Stroop task or the go/no-go task. We have carried out an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study in order to investigate the cortical mechanisms underlying the inhibition of imitative responses. The experiment employs a simple response task in which subjects were instructed to execute predefined finger movements (tapping or lifting of the index finger) in response to an observed congruent or incongruent finger movement (tapping or lifting). A comparison of brain activation in incongruent and congruent trials revealed strong activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (middle frontal gyrus) and activation in the right frontopolar cortex and the right anterior parietal cortex, as well as in the precuneus. These results support the assumption of prefrontal involvement in response inhibition and extend this assumption to a “new” class of prepotent responses, namely, to imitative actions.

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Regular ArticleThe Inhibition of Imitative Response Tendencies

Abstract

Acta Psychol.

Brain Cognit.

Trends Cognit. Sci.

Cognit. Brain Res.

Neuropsychologia

Cognit. Brain Res.

Brain Res.

NeuroImage

Neuropsychologia

Med. Image Anal.

Neuropsychologia

NeuroImage

The anterior cingulate cortex lends a hand in response selection

Nat. Neurosci.

Statistical analysis of multi-subject fMRI data: Assessment of focal activations

J. Magn. Reson. Imaging

Brain activation and pupil response during covert performance of the Stroop color word task

J. Int. Neuropsychol. Soc.

Imaging cognition. II: An empirical review of 275 PET and fMRI studies

J. Cognit. Neurosci.

Parsing executive processes: Strategic vs. evaluative functions of the anterior cingulate cortex

Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA

A developmental functional MRI study of prefrontal activation during performance of a go-no-go task

J. Cognit. Neurosci.

Brain activity during observation of actions: Influence of action content and subject's strategy

Brain

Imitation and utilisation behaviour

J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry

Understanding motor events: A neurophysiological study

Exp. Brain Res.

Dissociable functions in the medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex: Evidence from human neuroimaging studies

Cereb. Cortex

Motor facilitation during action observation: A magnetic stimulation study

J. Neurophysiol.

Neural mechanisms involved in the processing of global and local aspects of hierarchically organized visual stimuli

Brain

Regular Article
The Inhibition of Imitative Response Tendencies