Grasping the Intentions of Others: The Perceived Intentionality of an Action Influences Activity in the Superior Temporal Sulcus during Social Perception

“These regions have been known to play crucial roles in various social and communicative functions, including face perception [68 – 70], identification of facial expression of emotion [71], and detection and processing of social cues (e.g., gaze) [72, 73], all of which are disrupted in ASD [74, 75].”

“…as ‘‘action recognition’’ (Gallese, Fadiga, Fogassi, & Rizzolatti, 1996; Iacoboni, 2005; Molnar-Szakacs, Iacoboni, Koski, & Mazziotta, 2005), ‘‘action understanding’’ (Thioux, Gazzola, & Keysers, 2008), ‘‘intentional attunement’’ (Gallese, 2006), and ‘‘intentional stance’’ (Pelphrey et al., 2004).”

“…been found to be related to regions along the superior temporal sulcus (STS), the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) area, the anterior fronto-median cortex, and the posterior cingulate cortex (Brass et al., 2007; Frith and Frith, 2006; Grezes et al., 2004; Pelphrey et al., 2004b; Saxe et al., 2004).”

“…Kovacs, Perrett, & Kanwisher, 2004), when the fit of action to the environment has to be evaluated (Morrison et al., 2013), or when actions mismatch with goal expectations (Gao, Scholl, & McCarthy, 2012; Pelphrey, Morris, & Mccarthy, 2004), suggesting that they do indeed receive this information.”

“A diVerent way to view the laterality results is to consider the literature on hemispheric diVerences in processing the intentions and mental states of others (Grèzes, Frith, & Passingham, 2004; Iacoboni et al., 2005; Nakamura et al., 2004; Pelphrey et al., 2004; Sabbagh et al., 2004; Winston et al., 2002).”

“For example, some neuroimaging studies have reported that the STS region was active while viewing hand movements (Bonda et al., 1996; Pelphrey et al., 2004; Wheaton et al., 2004; Thompson et al., 2007) and hand gestures (Grezes et al., 1999; Nakamura et al., 2004).”

“This area has also been activated in a study on decoding intentionality that lacked task instructions (Pelphrey et al., 2004a), as did the current investigation.”

“…seems to be particularly responsive to more goal oriented actions (Hoffman and Haxby, 2000), or when actions are incongruent with perceived goals (Pelphrey et al., 2003, 2004), and also seems to differentiate between human and non-human characters even when the underlying biological motion…”

“The superior temporal sulcus is considered a “social brain area” (Pelphrey et al., 2004), and it is possible that there is a shift of touch processing from affective to discriminative networks in people with prominent autistic traits (Kaiser et al., 2015).”

“The right STS is a cornerstone for processing of meaningful body motion (Grossman and Blake, 2002; Pavlova et al., 2004; Pelphrey et al., 2004).”

“As mentioned above, neuroimaging studies also confirm the close neural connection between the detection of agency and the attribution of certain motion patterns to animates (cf. Pelphrey et al. 2004, Schultz et al. 2004, Schultz et al. 2005, Thompson et al. 2005).”

“ports suggest that it is responsible for encoding and updating another's goals based on their actions (Allison et al., 2000; Pelphrey et al., 2004; Shultz and McCarthy, 2012; Shultz et al., 2011).”

“mentalize [68,87,88,89], but other studies suggest that this”

“The pSTS region has been implicated widely in perception of social stimuli (as reviewed by Allison et al., 2000; Nummenmaa and Calder, 2009), and its involvement in eye gaze perception is well documented (Hoffman and Haxby, 2000; Hooker et al., 2003; Pelphrey et al., 2004b).”

“For instance, the superior temporal sulcus has shown activation peaks in tasks evaluating our understanding of the intentions and goals of other people’s actions (Lee et al. 2014; Pelphrey et al. 2004).”

“…1998; for a review, see Allison et al., 2000] but also on the representation of higher social cognitive functions such as the perception of intentionality [Pelphrey et al., 2004] or mentalizing/theory of mind [e.g., Gobbini et al., 2007; Singer et al., 2004; Spiers and Maguire, 2006] in the pSTS.”

“Instead, it appears to be generated by an integration of complex cognitive processes [16], including the perceptual extraction of others’ bodies and actions from one’s visual surrounding [17–19], the recognition of a movement’s meaning [20–23], the differentiation of self from others occupying the same locations in se…”

“Social cognitive neuroscience also benefits considerably by using mediated environments and dynamic stimuli of animated virtual characters (Adolphs, 2003; Pelphrey et al., 2004).”

“For example, it has been suggested that the STS especially encodes the intentional aspect occurring in the typical biological motion stimuli (Pelphrey et al., 2004b; Saxe et al., 2004b).”

“in social perception, specifically in analyzing the intentions of other people’s actions.(46) Previous reports have been inconsistent regarding the volume of the occipital lobes in subjects with ADHD.”

“…in fear conditioning (LeDoux, 2007), the attribution of salience in the extended amygdala (Liberzon et al. 2003) and the construction of self-reference (Grèzes et al. 2006) and the role of the STS in the attribution of intentions (Castelli et al. 2000 ; Pelphrey et al. 2004 ; Saxe et al. 2004).”

“Additionally, neuroimaging studies have enabled the identification of cortical regions, in particular the RTPJ, that appear to be critical for the performance of social cognition tasks (Pelphrey et al., 2004; Saxe and Wexler, 2005).”

“2012) and many other tasks involving perception of agency, theory of mind, and Gestalt integration (Saxe and Kanwisher 2003; Pelphrey et al. 2004; Saxe et al. 2004; Decety and Lamm 2007; Hein and Knight 2008; Huberle andKarnath 2012).”

“This activation falls within the STSp area identified in several studies of biological motion processing (49–51), in particular the part of this region preferentially activated by hand movements (52, 53).”

“Thus, STS activation was likely due to a matching between the observed HB images and the representation of body movement encoded in this region (see Perrett et al., 1989; Allison et al., 2000; Pelphrey et al., 2004; Thompson et al., 2005).”

“Similarly, the pSTS is also sensitive to the intentional contents of actions (Brass et al., 2007; Pelphrey et al., 2004; Saxe et al., 2004).”

“These regions are involved in extracting the intentions and mental states of others, which is required for moral judgment [Decety and Lamm, 2007; Pelphrey et al., 2004; Saxe et al., 2004; Yoder and Decety, 2014a].”

“…relatively insensitive to motion kinematics, image size, or viewpoint (Lestou et al., 2008; Grossman et al., 2010), and some investigators have suggested that the pSTS codes high-level aspects of biological motion such as action goals or intentions (Pelphrey et al., 2004; Vander Wyk et al., 2009).”

“…neurophysiological studies (Bonda et al., 1996; Decety and Grèzes, 1999; Iacoboni et al., 2001; Grossman and Blake, 2002; Nishitani et al., 2002; Pelphrey et al., 2004; Urgesi et al., 2004, 2007a,b; Michels et al., 2005; Peuskens et al., 2005; Grèzes et al., 2007; Candidi et al., 2008; Pichon…”

“In agreement with the idea that the STS may be sensitive to intentions expressed by eye gaze [57,73], Hooker and colleagues [42] showed a specificity of the STS in response to gaze cues.”

“This definition, however, does not reflect the complexity of the nature of the empathy concept (e.g. Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004; Hoffman, 1982; Macarov, 1978; Pelphrey et al., 2004).”

“superior temporal gyrus, the middle temporal gyrus (MTG), the part of the angular gyrus that is near the ascending limb of STS [13–17].”

“2000), and the modulation of pSTS activity to biological motion by contextual information (Pelphrey et al. 2003; Pelphrey et al. 2004).”

“Right-lateralized activations of the STS have been associated with tasks related to another person compared to the self [36,53,56,57,58], the representation of a person in space [59] and taking another person’s visual perspective [60,61].”

“role of STS in the decoding of intentions and beliefs in other people (Ethofer et al., 2013; Kreifelts, Ethofer, Shiozawa, Grodd, & Wildgruber, 2009; Pelphrey et al., 2004; Wyk et al., 2009) also accords with our finding of stronger responses when the social meaning is more difficult to interpret in incongruent expres…”

“The STS plays a key role in understanding others' intentions and theory-of-mind skills (Pelphrey et al., 2004), interpreting social communications (Materna et al., 2008), or reciprocating emotional behaviors (Davidovic et al., 2016).”

“Also relevant for this study is that the STS represents not only the actual motion but also the implied biological motion present in static articulated postures [Jellema & Perrett, 2003].”

“, 2009) and understanding the intentions of other individuals (Allison et al., 2000; Pelphrey et al., 2004), as a result of its connection with the fronto-parietal and limbic systems, amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex.”

“Interestingly , the activity in the right pSTS depends not just on the action itself; it responds more to actions that are unexpected or incongruent in context (Brass et al., 2007; Pelphrey et al., 2003, 2004).”

“For example, the STS, especially in the right hemisphere, was sensitive to the perceived context of shifts in gaze of a moving animated figure (Pelphrey et al. 2004b).”

“Both this region [55] and especially the rSTG have been repeatedly described as described as being primarily involved in perceiving biological motion [56,57] and understanding of others’ goals and intentions [58,59].”

“Moreover, this region is more active when seemingly goal-directed actions fail to meet the viewers' expectations, such as when an animated character reaches (Pelphrey et al., 2004) or looks (Pelphrey et al.”

“amygdala [114], the superior temporal sulcus [115] and”

“Unlike previous studies contrasting goal-directed actions with non-sensical, implausible actions (Pelphrey et al., 2004a; Vander Wyk et al., 2009), all of the actions produced in the current study were clearly goal-directed and therefore consistent with the subject’s expectations.”

“(Pelphrey, Morris, & McCarthy, 2004 ) found less activity in posterior STS when subjects passively viewed an animated character making reaching-to-grasp movements toward a blinking dial (correct action), as compared to movements away from the dial (incorrect action).”

“Eye contact activates many regions of the social brain, including the fusiform gyrus, anterior and posterior superior temporal gyri, mPFC, orbitofrontal cortex, and amygdala in humans (Calder et al., 2002; Conty et al., 2007; Kawashima et al., 1999; Pelphrey et al., 2004; Sato et al., 2004; Schilbach et al., 2006; Sen…”

“Given evidence that right TPJ and right pSTS may be more selective for belief and intention processing than their left homologues (e.g. Pelphrey et al ., 2004; Liu et al ., 2009; Donhel et al ., 2012), left and right pSTS and TPJ were examined separately.”

“Additionally, knowledge representations of humans (and animals) are distinguished as living things by the visual system, in part, due to their biological motion attributes (Pelphrey, Morris, & McCarthy, 2004 ; Frith & Frith, 1999 ; Johansson, 1973 ).”

“Please cite this article in press as: Abraham, A. et al., Minds, persons, and space: An fMRI investigation into the relational ..., Consciousness and Cognition (2008), doi:10.1016/j.concog.2008.03.011 (German, Niehaus, Roarty, Giesbrecht, & Miller, 2004; Grezes, Frith, & Passingham, 2004; Pelphrey, Morris, & McCarthy,…”

“They are also regions reported to have prominent roles in social cognition (Pelphrey et al., 2004; Jellema and Perrett, 2006; Zilbovicius et al., 2006).”

“Looking less to the eyes in an ecological situation may have a critical impact on the development of social skills in children with autism [25-27].”

“, 2016), the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) (Pelphrey et al., 2004; Lahnakoski et al., 2012; DV Smith et al., 2014; Deen et al., 2015; Isik et al., 2017), the medial PFC (Amodio and Frith, 2006; Apps and Ramnani, 2017; Denny et al.”

“…al., 2000; Giese and Poggio, 2003; Grossman and Blake, 2002; Lahnakoski et al., 2012; Man et al., 2012; Noesselt et al., 2007; Peelen et al., 2010; Pelphrey et al., 2003, 2004; Raij et al., 2000; Redcay, 2008; Watson et al., 2014], suggesting the STS may merge different kinds of sensory…”

“This finding extends previous studies reporting a more direct role of the superior temporal sulcus in perceiving intention from action (35, 36).”

“The STS was found to respond to point-light representations of biological movements (Grossman et al., 2004; Pelphrey et al., 2004), actions executed by humans (Thioux et al., 2008) and social visual cues (for reviews, see Nummenmaa & Calder, 2009; Allison, Puce & McCarthy, 2000).”

“... Morris, Pelphrey, & McCarthy, 2005; Pelphrey, Morris, Michelich, Allison, & McCarthy, 2005; Peuskens, Vanrie, Verfaillie, & Orban, 2005; Thompson, Clarke, Stewart, & Puce, 2005; Grossman, Blake, & Kim, 2004; Pavlova, Lutzenberger, Sokolov, & Birbaumer, 2004; Vaina & Gross, 2004; Beauchamp, Lee, Haxby, & Martin, 20…”