Inhibition of imitative behaviour and social cognition

TLDR

Mirror‑matching activates motor representations during action observation, yet how observers distinguish their own motor intentions from externally triggered representations remains largely unexplored. The study investigates whether inhibiting imitative responses reveals that self‑other distinction is essential for controlling shared representations and proposes that this control links the mirror system to mental state attribution. Using fMRI, the authors dissociate the roles of the temporo‑parietal junction and anterior fronto‑median cortex in regulating shared representations through inhibition of imitation. They find overlapping activation in the aFMC and TPJ during both shared‑representation control and mental‑state attribution tasks.

Abstract

There is converging evidence that the observation of an action activates a corresponding motor representation in the observer through a 'mirror-matching' mechanism. However, research on such 'shared representations' of perception and action has widely neglected the question of how we can distinguish our own motor intentions from externally triggered motor representations. By investigating the inhibition of imitative response tendencies, as an index for the control of shared representations, we can show that self-other distinction plays a fundamental role in the control of shared representations. Furthermore, we demonstrate that overlapping brain activations can be found in the anterior fronto-median cortex (aFMC) and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) area for the control of shared representations and complex social-cognitive tasks, such as mental state attribution. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, we functionally dissociate the roles of TPJ and aFMC during the control of shared representations. Finally, we propose a hypothesis stating that the control of shared representations might be the missing link between functions of the mirror system and mental state attribution.