a dynamic model for action understanding and stronggoalstrong-directed.pdf

1 Brain Research 1083 (2006) -188A Dynamic Model for Action Understanding and Goal-Directed ImitationWolfram Erlhagen1, Albert Mukovskiy1, Estela Bicho2 1Departament of Mathematics for Science and Technology, 2Department of Industrial Electronics, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimar?es, PortugalNumber of text pages: 34 Number of Figures: 12 Supplementary Material:1 figure, 1 text file (Appendix B), 4 videos Correspondence should be addressed to Wolfram Erlhagen E-Mail:wolfram.******@.: +351-253-510426, Fax: +351-253-510401 * Manuscript-title pg, abst, fig lgnd, refs, tbls2ABSTRACT The understanding of other individuals’ actions is a fundamental cognitive skill for all species living in social groups. Recent neurophysiological evidence suggests that an observer may achieve the understanding by mapping visual information onto his own motor repertoire to reproduce the action effect. However, due to differences in embodiment, environmental constraints or motor skills this mapping very often cannot be direct. In this paper we present a work model which represents in its layers the functionality of neurons in different interconnected brain areas known to be involved in action observation/execution tasks. The model aims at substantiating the idea that action understanding is a continuous process bines sensory evidence, prior task knowledge and a goal-directed matching of action observation and action execution. The model is tested in variations of an imitation task in which an observer with dissimilar embodiment tries to reproduce the perceived or inferred end-state of a grasping-placing sequence. We also propose and test a biologically plausible learning scheme which allows establishing during practice a goal-anization of the work. The modeling results are discussed with respect to recent experimental findings in action observation/execution studies. Theme: Neural basis of behavior Topic: Cognition Keywords: Action sequence; Mirro