Elsevier

NeuroImage

Volume 14, Issue 3, September 2001, Pages 749-758
NeuroImage

Regular Article
Different Brain Correlates for Watching Real and Virtual Hand Actions

https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2001.0872Get rights and content

Abstract

Weinvestigated whether observation of actions reproduced in three-dimensional virtual reality would engage perceptual and visuomotor brain processes different from those induced by the observation of real hand actions. Participants were asked to passively observe grasping actions of geometrical objects made by a real hand or by hand reconstructions of different quality in 3D virtual reality as well as on a 2D TV screen. We found that only real actions in natural environment activated a visuospatial network including the right posterior parietal cortex. Observation of virtual-reality hand actions engaged prevalent visual perceptual processes within lateral and mesial occipital regions. Thus, only perception of actions in reality maps onto existing action representations, whereas virtual-reality conditions do not access the full motor knowledge available to the central nervous system.

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    1

    To whom correspondence should be addressed at Institute of Neuroscience and Bioimaging, CNR, Via Olgettina 60, 20132 Milan, Italy. E-mail: [email protected].

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