How embodied is cognition? fMRI and behavioral evidence for common neural resources underlying motor planning and mental rotation of bodily stimuli.

ABSTRACT: Functional neuroimaging shows that dorsal frontoparietal regions exhibit conjoint activity during various motor and cognitive tasks. However, it is unclear whether these regions serve several, computationally independent functions, or underlie a motor "core process" that is reused to serve higher-order functions. We hypothesized that mental rotation capacity relies on a phylogenetically older motor process that is rooted within these areas. This hypothesis entails that neural and cognitive resources recruited during motor planning predict performance in seemingly unrelated mental rotation tasks. To test this hypothesis, we first identified brain regions associated with motor planning by measuring functional activations to internally-triggered vs externally-triggered finger presses in 30 he

SUBMITTER: Doganci N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10687356 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature