Brain areas involved in the perception of biological motion.

Emily Grossman
Vision Sciences Laboratory
Harvard University

Humans are naturally social creatures, and it is not surprising to
learn that individuals are quite adept at recognizing what other
people are doing.  This ability is most dramatically exemplified
by the perception of biological motion from "point-light"
animations, in which human bodies and movements are depicted by a
handful of tokens representing the joints on the body.  In this
talk I will describe a series of fMRI experiments designed to
evaluate several hypotheses concerning the neural correlates of
biological motion perception. I will describe a brain area
(STSp) selectively involved in the perception of biological motion,
and the stimulus specificity required to elicit neural responses
within this region. I will also discuss the similarities and
differences between this region and other brain areas activated by
viewing bodies, faces, and non-human objects. Finally, I will
discuss two experiments that examine the correlation between neural
responses in STSp and the perceptual experience of the observer. The
results from these experiments will be discussed in the context of
our more broad understanding of the important role the human superior
temporal sulcus plays in the perception of socially relevant
events.