Watching With Intent To Repeat Ignites Key Learning Area Of Brain
Watch and learn. Experience says it works, but how? University of
Oregon researchers have seen the light, by imaging the brain, while
test subjects watched films of others building objects with Tinker
Toys.
As detailed in the Dec. 20 issue of the Journal of
Neuroscience, researchers, using functional magnetic resonance imaging,
found that when a person watches someone else perform a task with the
intention of later replicating the observed performance, motor areas of
the brain are activated in a fashion similar to that with accompanies
actual movement.
"We've been looking at the process of motor learning through
observation in the context of procedures," said principal investigator
Scott H. Frey, professor of psychology and director of the Lewis Center
for Neuroimaging at the University of Oregon. Frey's interest is geared
toward improvements in rehabilitation for individuals suffering brain
or bodily injury.
"Teaching a physical skill often involves someone demonstrating the
essential action components after which the learner tries to reproduce
what has been observed. This is true for behaviors ranging from
learning to eat with utensils, playing an instrument or performing
surgery. We wanted to know how the brain takes what is seen and
translates it into a motor program for guiding skilled movements," he
said.
In the experiment, 19 college-aged, healthy adults watched a series of
digital videos of another person putting together or disassembling
objects using six toy parts. In one condition, participants simply
watched the activity; in another, they observed clips with the
intention to be able to reproduce the actions in the correct sequential
order minutes later.
Despite lying completely still during these tasks, observing with the
intention to learn actions and subsequently reproduce them engages
areas of the brain known to contribute to motor learning thorough
actual physical practice. In particular, Frey said, the amount of
activity occurring in the intraparietal sulcus -- when watching to
learn accurately -- predicts how well these actions are reproduced
minutes later.
Frey's group and others have previously implicated that this region is
involved in organizing goal-directed manual actions. In effect, Frey
said, the activity in intraparietal cortex may act as a thermometer
that shows how well a person is translating what they are observing
into a motor program for later performance.
"What appears vital is the intention of the observer rather than simply
the visual stimulus that is being viewed," Frey said. "If the goal is
to be able to do what you are seeing, then it appears that activity
through your motor system is up-regulated substantially."
Using fMRI, researchers are able to monitor changes in activity
throughout the entire brain while people think by taking advantage of
differences in the magnetic properties of oxygenated and deoxygenated
hemoglobin. These changes closely track underlying neural activity.
The findings "implicate the parieto-frontal mirror system in encoding
the spatial components of observed actions and the primary motor cortex
in the formation of novel motor memories through observation," wrote
Frey and research assistant Valerie E. Gerry in their conclusions.
"This study is the first in a series of several experiments that we
plan to do," Frey said. "It tells us something about how our own motor
systems can be engaged and stimulated even in the absence of overt
movements. This could prove important as a means of facilitating
rehabilitation of individuals with movement impairments or paralysis."
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The National Institutes of Health and the James S. McDonnell Foundation funded the research through grants to Frey.
Contact: Jim Barlow
Source: Scott H. Frey, director, Lewis Center for Neuroimaging
Links:
http://lcni.uoregon.edu/index.html
http://freylab.uoregon.edu/
http://psychweb.uoregon.edu/faculty/facultyinfo.htm#Frey
Contact: Jim Barlow
University of Oregon
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