The contribution of brain sub-cortical loops in the expression and acquisition of action understanding abilities
Open accessAbstract
Research on action understanding in cognitive neuroscience has led to the identification of a wide "action understanding network" mainly encompassing parietal and premotor cortical areas. Within this cortical network mirror neurons are critically involved implementing a neural mechanism according to which, during action understanding, observed actions are reflected in the motor patterns for the same actions of the observer. We suggest that focusing only on cortical areas and processes could be too restrictive to explain important facets of action understanding regarding, for example, the influence of the observer's motor experience, the multiple levels at which an observed action can be understood, and the acquisition of action understanding ability. In this respect, we propose that aside from the cortical action understanding network, sub-cortical processes pivoting on cerebellar and basal ganglia cortical loops could crucially support both the expression and the acquisition of action understanding abilities. Within the paper we will discuss how this extended view can overcome some limitations of the "pure" cortical perspective, supporting new theoretical predictions on the brain mechanisms underlying action understanding that could be tested by future empirical investigations.
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Brain loops might extend beyond the striatum and include the cerebellum, which has been assumed to encode a large repertoire of internal models required to predict and control action and its timing.
“Brain loops might extend beyond the striatum and include, for example, the cerebellum, which – given its remarkably homogenous microarchitecture – has been often assumed to be able to encode a large repertoire of internal (generative) models required to predict and control action and its timing (Caligiore et al., 2013, Imamizu et al., 2003, Miall and Wolpert, 1996, Wolpert et al., 1998).”
From Active Inference, homeostatic regulation and adaptive behavioural control (2015) · cites this paper as Caligiore et al., 2013
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References 170 · Cited by 87
- Authors
- Caligiore, D., Pezzulo, G., Miall, R. C., & Baldassarre, G.
- Affiliations
- National Research Council (IT)
- Institute for Computational Linguistics “A. Zampolli” (IT)
- University of Birmingham (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Caligiore, Daniele
- Venue
- Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2013-12
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 2504-2515
- ISSN
- 0149-7634 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3878436
- OpenAlex
- W2106205767
- Cited by
- 87
- References
- 170
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 14
- FWCI
- 1.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- University of Birmingham Research Portal (University of Birmingham) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- University of Birmingham Research Portal (University of Birmingham) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- IM-CLeVeR–Intrinsically Motivated Cumulative Learning Versatile Robots” (FP7-IP -231722)
- Goal-Leaders (FP7-ICT-270108)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Motor Control and Adaptation
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Keywords
- action understanding, mirror neurons, motor experience, parietal cortex, premotor cortex, embodied cognition
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Brain, Brain Mapping, Humans, Neural Pathways, Comprehension
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