Abstract
Biological motion detection is both commonplace and important, but there is great inter-individual variability in this ability, the neural basis of which is currently unknown. Here we examined whether the behavioral variability in biological motion detection is reflected in brain anatomy. Perceptual thresholds for detection of biological motion and control conditions (non-biological object motion detection and motion coherence) were determined in a group of healthy human adults (n=31) together with structural magnetic resonance images of the brain. Voxel based morphometry analyzes revealed that gray matter volumes of left posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and left ventral premotor cortex (vPMC) significantly predicted individual differences in biological motion detection, but showed no significant relationship with performance on the control tasks. Our study reveals a neural basis associated with the inter-individual variability in biological motion detection, reliably linking the neuroanatomical structure of left pSTS and vPMC with biological motion detection performance.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 457-463 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Neuropsychologia |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2013 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was funded by European Commission Marie-Curie fellowship 236021 (SGD), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (RK) , the Danish National Research Foundation and British Academy Postdoctoral fellowship (BB) , the Wellcome Trust (GR) , European Commission Marie-Curie fellowship FP6-02504 and NSF CAREER award 1151805 (APS). The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging is supported by core funding from the Wellcome Trust 091593/Z/10/Z . We thank Emily Grossman and Randolph Blake for sharing stimuli from Ahlstrom et al. (1997) .
Funding
This work was funded by European Commission Marie-Curie fellowship 236021 (SGD), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (RK) , the Danish National Research Foundation and British Academy Postdoctoral fellowship (BB) , the Wellcome Trust (GR) , European Commission Marie-Curie fellowship FP6-02504 and NSF CAREER award 1151805 (APS). The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging is supported by core funding from the Wellcome Trust 091593/Z/10/Z . We thank Emily Grossman and Randolph Blake for sharing stimuli from Ahlstrom et al. (1997) .
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| European Commission Marie-Curie | |
| National Science Foundation | 236021, 1151805, 309865, 091593/Z/10/Z |
| Wellcome Trust | FP6-02504 |
| British Academy | |
| Japan Society for the Promotion of Science | |
| Danmarks Grundforskningsfond |
Keywords
- Individual differences
- Point light displays
- Premotor cortex
- Temporal cortex
- Voxel based morphometry
