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The superior temporal sulcus (STS) is amajor component of thehuman face perceptionnetwork, implicated in processing dynamic changeable aspects of faces. However, it remains unknown whether STS holds functionally segregated subdivisions for different categories of facialmovements. We used high-resolution functionalmagnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 7T in 16 volunteers to compare STS activation with faces displaying angry or happy expressions, eye-gaze shifts and lip-speechmovements. Combining univariate and multivariate analyses, we show a systematic topological organization within STS, with gaze-related activity predominating in the most posterior and superior sector, speech-related activity in the anterior sector and emotional expressions represented in the intermediatemiddle STS. Right STS appeared to hold a finer functional segregation between all four types of facialmovements, and best discriminative abilities within the face-selective posterior STS (pSTS). Conversely, left STS showed greater overlap between conditions, with a lack of distinction betweenmouthmovements associated to speech or happy expression and better discriminative abilities (for gaze and speech vs emotion conditions) outside pSTS. Differential sensitivity to upper (eye) or lower (mouth) facial features may contribute to, but does not appear to fully account for, these response patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A crucial feature of socially adaptive behavior is the ability to recognize when our actions harm other individuals. Previous research demonstrates that dorsal mediofrontal cortex (dMFC) and anterior insula (AI) are involved in both action monitoring and empathy for pain. Here, we tested whether these regions could integrate monitoring of error agency with the representation of others' pain. While undergoing event-related fMRI, participants played a visual task in turns with a friend placed outside the scanner, who would receive painful stimulation in half of the error trials. Brain activity was enhanced in dMFC and AI for painful compared with non-painful errors. Left AI and dorsolateral pFC also exhibited a significant interaction with agency and increased responses when painful errors were caused by oneself. We conclude that AI is crucial for integrating inferences about others' feeling states with information about action agency and outcome, thus generating an affective signal that may guide subsequent adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Human ability to imitate movements is instantiated in parietal, premotor and opercular structures, often referred to as the human homologue of the macaque mirror neuron system. As most studies employed imitation of specular models (participants imitated the seen movement as their mirror reflection), it is unclear whether the structures implicated code for the anatomical compatibility between the performer and the model or the spatial compatibility between the location at which both movements occur. We used fMRI to disentangle the neural mechanisms underlying anatomical and spatial components of imitation. Participants moved one finger which was either spatially or anatomically compatible with the finger moved in a video-display. In keeping with the existent behavioral literature, we found that during the spatial task, participants'' responses were faster when the seen movement was also anatomically compatible, whereas in the anatomical task, responses were faster when the seen movement was also spatially compatible. Critically, the activity of the parietal opercula bilaterally was associated with the anatomical compatibility effect. Furthermore, increased activity of the left middle frontal gyrus and right superior temporal sulcus (extending to the temporo-parietal junction) was found in those trials in which the spatial mapping between the seen and executed movements was detrimental for the anatomical task. Our findings extend current understanding of the role played by spatial and anatomical components in imitation and provide new insights about the parietal opercula. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The discovery of regions in the human brain (e.g., insula and cingulate cortex) that activate both under direct exposure to pain and when perceiving pain in others has been interpreted as a neural signature of empathy. However, this overlap raises the question of whether it may reflect a unique distributed population of bimodal neurons or, alternatively, the activity of intermingled but independent populations. We used fMRI on 28 female volunteers and used multivariate pattern analysis techniques to probe for more fine-grain spatial representations of seen and felt pain. Using a whole-brain approach, we found that only in the anterior insula (bilaterally) the distribution of cortical activity evoked by seeing another person's hand in pain was spatially similar to that of pain felt on one's own hand. Subsequent region of interest analyses also implicated the middle insula (right hemisphere) and the middle cingulate cortex. Furthermore, for the anterior insula, the spatial distribution of activity associated with one's pain also replicates that of the perception of negative but painless stimuli. Our data show how the neural representations of aversive events affecting oneself are also recruited when the same events affect others, and provide the stronger evidence thus far of a unique distributed cortical ensemble coding for aversive events regardless of the subject who is affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]