Search results for "Mirror"
showing 10 items of 202 documents
Grasp-specific motor resonance is influenced by the visibility of the observed actor
2016
AbstractMotor resonance is the modulation of M1 corticospinal excitability induced by observation of others' actions. Recent brain imaging studies have revealed that viewing videos of grasping actions led to a differential activation of the ventral premotor cortex depending on whether the entire person is viewed versus only their disembodied hand. Here we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to examine motor evoked potentials (MEPs) in the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and abductor digiti minimi (ADM) during observation of videos or static images in which a whole person or merely the hand was seen reaching and grasping a peanut (precision grip) or an apple (whole hand grasp). Part…
Effect of retention interval on the simultaneous cognate-noncognate and remember-know mirror effects.
2006
Recognition memory for Spanish-Catalan cognate and noncognate words was tested at retention intervals of 30 minutes, 3 days, and 7 days using a remember/know response procedure. We observed a clear mirror effect for the cognate-noncognate stimulus class and a remember-know response categorisation at the immediate retention interval. However, the cognate and noncognate mirror was still observed at 3 and 7 days, whereas the remember-know mirror disappeared at both retention intervals. Also, we ran a repeated testing condition to be able to carry out a sequential item analysis and observe the fate of the original remember and know responses 3 or 7 days later. The analysis supported the idea th…
The effect of neurodegenerative lesions on the mechanism of motor resonance induced by action observation
2018
The concept of “embodied cognition” considers that the classical Perception-Cognition-Action architecture proposing a sequential flow of processing with clean cuts between all modules is not appropriate to understand the behavioral effect of neurodegenerative disorders and to find innovative therapeutic solutions. In the last decades, the discovery of the mirror neurons (MN) has given a biological substrate to this theoretical perspective: the MN are now thought linking together knowledge about actions and perceptions not only to integrate perception in action planning and execution but also as a neural mechanism supporting a wide range of cognitive functions, e.g. empathy and language. At …
Collective Intentionality, Methodological Solipsism, and Current Neurosciences.
2008
L’intervento analizza la teoria searleana dell’intenzionalità collettiva e la sua pretesa di superamento della dicotomia tra approcci individualisti (riduzionisti) e collettivisti all’intenzionalità collettiva considerandone la plausibilità alla luce della recente scoperta dei mirror neurons (interpretata alla luce delle teorie di Gallese e Rizzolatti) e della più generale concezione della mente come sistema autonomo modulato dall’ambiente quale emerge dalle teorie di Edelman e Llinàs.
Recognizing actions with the associative self-organizing map
2013
When artificial agents interact and cooperate with other agents, either human or artificial, they need to recognize others’ actions and infer their hidden intentions from the sole observation of their surface level movements. Indeed, action and intention understanding in humans is believed to facilitate a number of social interactions and is supported by a complex neural substrate (i.e. the mirror neuron system). Implementation of such mechanisms in artificial agents would pave the route to the development of a vast range of advanced cognitive abilities, such as social interaction, adaptation, and learning by imitation, just to name a few. We present a first step towards a fully-fledged int…
A multichannel piezo driver for active mirrors in X-ray telescopes
2016
X-ray astronomy is gaining importance for studying X-ray space sources such as single and binary stars, neutron stars, supernovae and black holes. Due to atmospheric absorption, X-ray telescopes must operate in space on satellites. Among the causes limiting the resolution of modern telescopes are distortions in mirrors shape. An innovative approach for X-ray mirrors aims at correcting the shape errors by means of piezo-ceramic actuators glued to the back of the mirrors, thus creating an “active mirror”. In order to test the viability of shape correction, we fabricated [1] a prototype of a thin glass active mirror, sized 20 cm x 20 cm with a 400 um thickness (Fig. 1). The mirror can allocate…
Gli specchi argentati della Collezione Storica degli Strumenti di Fisica dell’Università di Palermo
2021
Nell'articolo presenteremo tre strumenti scientifici di particolare interesse storico-didattico appartenenti alla Collezione Storica degli Strumenti di Fisica dell'Università di Palermo: uno specchio convesso risalente molto probabilmente all'inizio del XIX secolo e una coppia di specchi ustori risalenti molto probabilmente alla metà del XIX secolo. Dopo un'introduzione sullo sviluppo storico degli specchi e il loro principio di funzionamento, descriveremo le caratteristiche fisiche degli strumenti della collezione e gli interventi effettuati. In the paper we will describe three instruments of particular historical and didactic interest belonging to the Historical Collection of Physics Inst…
Motor simulation via coupled internal models using sequential Monte Carlo
2011
We describe a generative Bayesian model for action understanding in which inverse-forward internal model pairs are considered 'hypotheses' of plausible action goals that are explored in parallel via an approximate inference mechanism based on sequential Monte Carlo methods. The reenactment of internal model pairs can be considered a form of motor simulation, which supports both perceptual prediction and action understanding at the goal level. However, this procedure is generally considered to be computationally inefficient. We present a model that dynamically reallocates computational resources to more accurate internal models depending on both the available prior information and the predic…
The role of synergies within generative models of action execution and recognition: A computational perspective. Comment on "Grasping synergies: A mo…
2015
Controlling the body – given its huge number of degrees of freedom – poses severe computational challenges. Mounting evidence suggests that the brain alleviates this problem by exploiting “synergies”, or patterns of muscle activities (and/or movement dynamics and kinematics) that can be combined to control action, rather than controlling individual muscles of joints [1–10]. D’Ausilio et al. [11] explain how this view of motor organization based on synergies can profoundly change the way we interpret studies of action recognition in humans and monkeys, and in particular the controversy on the “granularity” of the mirror neuron system (MNs): whether it encodes either (lower) kinematic aspects…