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The building sector is currently responsible of 40% of global final energy consumption, influencing the broader energy system in terms of new electricity and heat capacity additions, as well as distribution infrastructure reinforcement. Current building energy efficiency potential is largely untapped, especially at the local level where retrofit interventions are typically enforced, neglecting their potential synergies with the entire energy system. To improve the understanding of these potential interactions, this paper proposes a methodology that links dynamic building simulation and energy planning tools at the urban scale. At first, a detailed bottom-up analysis was conducted to estimate the current and post-retrofit energy demand of the building stock. The stock analysis is further linked to a broader energy system simulation model to understand the impact of building renovation on the whole urban energy system in terms of cost, greenhouse gas emission, and primary energy consumption up to 2050. The methodology is suited to analyze the relationship between building energy demand reduction potential and clean energy sources&rsquo, deployment to shift buildings away from fossil fuels, the key priority for decarbonizing buildings. The methodology was applied to the case study city of Torino, Italy, highlighting the critical role of coupling proper building retrofit intervention with district-level heat generation strategies, such as modern district heating able to exploit low-grade heat. Being able to simulate both demand and supply future alternatives, the methodology provides a robust reference for municipalities and energy suppliers aiming at promoting efficient energy policies and targeted investments.

PurposeThe cost-optimal analysis is not able to address the multi-dimensionality of the decision according to the new European objectives and International sustainable development goals in the field of the nearly-zero energy building (NZEB) design. The purpose of this paper is to study the role of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) for guiding energy investment decisions.Design/methodology/approachThe paper explores the Preference ranking organization method for enrichment of evaluations II (PROMETHEE II) application to support the project of transforming a rural building into a NZEB. The evaluation provides an estimate of the effects of alternative energy efficiency measures, involving energy consumption, life cycle costs, carbon emissions, property value and indoor comfort criteria. The study performs a multi-actors analysis in order to understand how different consumers' point of views can influence the final choice of the best investment. Furthermore, a multi-site analysis explores the spatial variation of NZEB building appreciation in the real estate market.FindingsThe PROMETHEE II-based model ranks 16 alternative solutions for the NZEB according to energy, economic and extra-economic criteria. The multi-actors analysis highlights the configuration of the NZEB building that best meets the needs of different end-users, respecting the European directives and national standards. The multi-site analysis concludes that location does not change users' appreciation and not influence the output for the best solution.Originality/valueThe MCDA occurs as a support tool that helps to optimize the preliminary design phase of NZEB through the exploration of the optimal solution considering crucial criteria in the energy and environmental and real estate market rules.

The spread of COVID-19 has affected the lives of millions of people. Pandemic has made people more sensitive to health issues. In particular, the growing concern for the virus spread in confined spaces has promoted the necessity to improve indoor air quality. Literature is stressing how buildings must be designed and operated pursuing occupants' health and well-being, with a particular attention for indoor air parameters. This poses the challenge of monitoring and assessing these aspects through proper metrics. In this paper the approach towards a multi-step assessment procedure embedding in buildings assessment health and well-being related variables and indicators is elaborated. They are intended to inform a building manager of the potential influence of air conditions on human health and well-being. Moreover, a set of monetary metrics (i.e., impacts) is proposed to translate energy and indoor air related building performances into euros, putting the basis for a comprehensive economic evaluation. The application of the set of proposed metrics to an Italian hotel (i.e., Italian pilot of H2020 MOBISTYLE project), enabled to map some indoor air conditions causing health concerns, and to identify clusters of guests with best and worst indoor air conditions, to be targeted by new management strategies. Despite case study specific limitations, the application exemplified how the methodology can expand the traditional energy-based performance assessment for building management towards indoor air domain and the related economic impacts, with implication on results in terms of overall economic performance of the building from both a private and public perspective.

Significance A major challenge in studying intention reading is high motor variability. Analyses conducted across trials provide insights into what happens on average; however, they may obscure how individual observers read intention information in individual movements. We combined motion tracking, psychophysics, and computational analyses to examine intention reading in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) with single-trial resolution. Results revealed that a sizeable fraction of ASD observers can identify intention-informative variations in ASD (but not in typically developing) movement kinematics, but they are nonetheless unable to extract the encoded intention information. This approach not only enhances our basic understanding of mind reading in ASD but also provides potential avenues for the rational design of training procedures to improve the reading of others’ actions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant changes to human life and habits. There is an increasing urgency to promote occupants’ health and well-being in the built environment where they spend most of their lives, putting indoor air quality (IAQ) in the spotlight. This study fits into this context, aiming to provide useful information about the design, construction, and operation of an IAQ-resilient building in the post-pandemic era for it to ensure a good trade-off between energy- and health-related objectives. The PRISMA guidelines were adopted to conducting a systematic review obtaining 58 studies that offered relevant results on two main research areas: (i) the concept of resilience, focusing on its definition in relation to the built environment and to pandemic-related disruptions; and (ii) the building design strategies that are able to increase buildings’ resilience, focusing on the preventive measures involving engineering control. In addition, the metrics and the decision-making tools able to make IAQ-resilient buildings attractive to the investors, focusing on the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) technique, were discussed. The research supported the transition of the building sector to a human-centered approach that is able to include IAQ resilience among the main priorities of future buildings to guarantee the occupants’ health and well-being.

The perception, physiology, behavior, and performance of building occupants are influenced by multi-domain exposures: the simultaneous presence of multiple environmental stimuli, i.e., visual, thermal, acoustic, and air quality. Despite being extensive, the literature on multi-domain exposures presents heterogeneous methodological approaches and inconsistent study reporting, which hinder direct comparison between studies and meta-analyses. Therefore, in addition to carrying out more multi-domain studies, such investigations need to be designed, conducted, and documented in a systematic and transparent way. With the goal to facilitate and support future multi-domain studies and their meta-analyses, this work provides (1) a range of criteria for multi-domain study design and reporting (i.e., defined as quality criteria), and (2) a critical review of the multi-domain literature based on the described criteria, which can serve as guidelines and recommendations for future studies on the topic. The identified quality criteria encompass study set-up, study deployment and analysis, and study outcome, stressing the importance of adopting a consistent terminology and result reporting style. The developed critical review highlights several shortcomings in the design, deployment, and documentation of multi-domain studies, emphasizing the need for quality improvements of future multi-domain research. The ultimate goal of this work is to consolidate our knowledge on multi-domain exposures for its integration into regulatory resources and guidelines, which are currently dominated by single-domain knowledge.

Summary Motion tracking provides unique insights into motor, cognitive, and social development by capturing subtle variations into how movements are planned and controlled. Here, we present a low-cost, wearable movement measurement platform, KiD, specifically designed for tracking the movements of infants and children in a variety of natural settings. KiD consists of a small, lightweight sensor containing a nine-axis inertial measurement unit plus an integrated processor for computing rotations. Measurements of three-dimensional acceleration using KiD compare well with those of current state-of-the-art optical motion capture systems. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate successful classification of different types of sinusoidal right arm movements using KiD., Graphical abstract, Highlights • We developed a wearable platform (KiD) designed for tracking movements of children • We establish the potential of KiD as stand-alone movement measurement platform • We demonstrate successful classification of different types of movements using KiD • Accelerations collected using KiD compare well with those of optical MoCap systems, Biological sciences; Neuroscience; Behavioral neuroscience; Techniques in neuroscience

Joint actions are omnipresent, ranging from a handshake between two people to the coordination of groups of people playing in an orchestra. We are highly skilled at coordinating our actions with those of others to reach common goals and rely on this ability throughout our daily lives. What are the social, cognitive and neural processes underlying this ability? How do others around us influence our task representations? How does joint action influence interpersonal interactions? How do language and gesture support joint action? What differentiates joint action from individual action? This article forms an introductory editorial to the field of joint action. It accompanies contributions to the special issue entitled "Current Issues in Joint Action Research". The issue brings together conceptual and empirical approaches on different topics, ranging from lower-level issues such as the link between perception and joint action, to higher-level issues such as language as a form of joint action.

To achieve the energy and emissions reduction goals for the building sector, actions are needed to improve energy efficiency and occupants’ wellbeing. To increase the uptake of smart technologies a...

Cities represent the places with the greatest environmental and energy impacts in the world. Their transformation through a sustainable key would make possible reducing the pressures registered in these areas. According to the Sustainable Development Goals, attention has shifted more and more to the creation of sustainable and safe communities, characterized by low energy-consuming buildings due to smart heating and cooling systems, and sustainable transport solutions based on the use of private electric and hybrid vehicles. Besides the energy and environmental impacts, actions to tackle climate change provide the opportunity to create collateral benefits that can potentially generate economic and social improvement for the whole community. The co-benefits inclusion in the decision analysis is crucial to remove barriers and reveal the real potential of renovation projects at the urban/district scale. Following the guidelines of the European Commission, the tool used when evaluating public projects and policies is the Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA). One of the main limitations of the CBA method is the estimation of all positive and negative externalities in monetary value that can lead to imprecise assessment. To overcome this obstacle, a growing scientific literature on the application of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to assess the sustainability of investment at district scale is emerging. In this study, we propose a new assessment framework based on the COmpoSIte Modeling Assessment (COSIMA) to address the multidimensionality that characterizes the redevelopment process of eco-districts considering energy, environmental, economic and social evaluation criteria. The COSIMA method enables considering both the tangible and intangible aspects of the problem and the opinion of the various stakeholders involved in the decision-making process, which are crucial aspects in urban transformations.

The building sector plays a crucial role in the advocated transition towards a carbon-free economy, and thus the zero-carbon building concept is taking hold. The paper focuses on the issue of existing hotels, with the aim of investigating the possibility of meeting the ambitious zero-carbon targets for this category of buildings, in which guests’ comfort and satisfaction is the core business. A reference hotel and different retrofit scenarios are assessed in two Italian climatic zones. Models are evaluated with a multi-objective approach, by introducing a set of hotel-related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), to evaluate the simulated models on three main dimensions: thermal comfort, energy and environmental impacts. The obtained results have emphasized the difficulty to achieve the zero-carbon targets, due to the high energy consumptions caused by the comfort-based nature of hotels and of the space constraints for on-site renewable sources. These outcomes help highlighting the need to shift the focus from single building to district or city scale, proving that the zero-carbon building definition must go hand-in-hand with the Post-Carbon City concept.

Why do we run toward people we love, but only walk toward others? One reason is to let them know we love them. In this commentary, we elaborate on how subjective utility information encoded in vigor is read out by others. We consider the potential implications for understanding and modeling the link between movements and decisions in social environments.

Failure to develop prospective motor control has been proposed to be a core phenotypic marker of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, whether genuine differences in prospective motor control permit discriminating between ASD and non-ASD profiles over and above individual differences in motor output remains unclear. Here, we combined high precision measures of hand movement kinematics and rigorous machine learning analyses to determine the true power of prospective movement data to differentiate children with autism and typically developing children. Our results show that while movement is unique to each individual, variations in the kinematic patterning of sequential grasping movements genuinely differentiate children with autism from typically developing children. These findings provide quantitative evidence for a prospective motor control impairment in autism and indicate the potential to draw inferences about autism on the basis of movement kinematics.

The global attention towards climate change has led national governments and the international community to the definition of plans aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in all economic sectors. Recently, attention has focused also on the tourism sector, and especially on the lodging industry, which consumes high amounts of resources and energy to satisfy guests expectations in terms of offered services and comfort conditions. In this sector, eco-certifications or green labels are spreading, perceived as useful marketing tools to communicate the hoteliers’ environmental efforts to consumers, who are becoming more and more sensitive to ecological matters. However, the wide offer of green labels and the lack of appropriate information are contributing to increase costumers’ confusion and perception of real “green”. The present paper focuses its attention on a set of currently available tools to evaluate the environmental performances of hotels, in order to enquire if and to which extent they are able to inform about the sustainability of accommodation structures. Starting from the wide number of certification schemes available on the market, 19 multi-attribute, third-party green labels were compared, aiming to explore the role that energy efficiency measures play in the certification procedure.

Universities play a headship role among entities that invest in technological progress and intend to increase education in sustainable culture towards a post-carbon society. With this in mind, Politecnico di Torino is a leader on the national and international scene. It has prepared sustainability lines for the next few years to translate the Sustainable Development Goals into concrete actions. The goal of this work is the evaluation of eight alternative energy efficiency scenarios resulting from the combination of different strategies for the retrofit of the University Campus of Politecnico di Torino. In the first part of the study, the alternatives are assessed in terms of energy performance. Subsequently, an economic evaluation supported by the multi-criteria TOPSIS method makes it possible to order the alternatives according to the opinion of several experts. The integrated evaluation allows considering a set of co-benefits generated by the project going behind the energy aspects. The best strategy involves covering electricity needs with renewable energy sources, adopting students’ engagement policies and optimizing the set-point temperature. The results highlight how low-cost solutions such as awareness campaigns and variation of the set-point temperature can bring significant co-benefits from energy, economic, environmental and social perspectives.

The concept of smartness in building dates to the 1970s, but, in face of the breakthrough technological developments, a new notion of smart building is currently recognized. We talk about ambient intelligence, referring to a building which is responsive to the needs of the occupants and of the energy system. An ambient-intelligent building is human-centric; new services and interfaces are provided to the buildings occupants to learn and set their preferences, with a positive impact on their comfort level and satisfaction with the indoor environmental quality. ICT and IoT are part of the enabling technologies to exploit the potentials of smart buildings, by unlocking the capability of buildings to interact with the system they belong to. To bolster the diffusion of new technologies, methodologies to get quantitative results proving their effectiveness should be provided. In this paper the application of a well-established economic evaluation tool, the so-called Cost-Benefit Analysis, to the case of the deployment of new ICT-tools for occupants’ engagement is presented. The methodology is adopted within the H2020 Mobistyle project, where two levels of the evaluation are identified: the whole project level and the single demo case one. The purpose of the methodology is to assess the effectiveness of the adoption of the ICT-tools in producing economic value in terms of benefits for the occupants and the society. Some preliminary results of its application to the Italian case study are also presented, showing a positive socio-economic balance since the beginning of the deployment.

Expectations facilitate perception of expected stimuli but may hinder perception of unexpected alternatives. Here, we consider how prior expectations about others’ intentions are integrated with visual kinematics over time in detecting the intention of an observed motor act (grasp-to-pour vs. grasp-to-drink). Using rigorous psychophysics methods, we find that the processes of ascribing intentions to others are well described by drift diffusion models in which evidence from observed movements is accumulated over time until a decision threshold is reached. Testing of competing models revealed that when kinematics contained no discriminative intention information, prior expectations predicted the intention choice of the observer. When kinematics contained intention information, kinematics predicted the intention choice. These findings provide evidence for a diffusion process in which the influence of expectations is modulated by movement informativeness and informative kinematics can override initial expectations.

Professional magicians regularly use pantomimed grasps (i.e., movements towards imagined objects) to deceive audiences. To do so, they learn to shape their hands similarly for real and pantomimed grasps. Here we tested whether this form of motor expertise provides them a significant benefit when processing pantomimed grasps. To this aim, in a one-interval discrimination design, we asked 17 professional magicians and 17 naïve controls to watch video clips of reach-to-grasp movements recorded from naïve participants and judge whether the observed movement was real or pantomimed. All video clips were edited to spatially occlude the grasped object (either present or imagined). Data were analysed within a drift diffusion model approach. Fitting different models showed that, whereas magicians and naïve performed similarly when observing real grasps, magicians had a specific advantage compared with naïve at discriminating pantomimed grasps. These findings suggest that motor expertise may be crucial for detecting relevant cues from hand movement during the discrimination of pantomimed grasps. Results are discussed in terms of motor recalibration.

What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm? Neurological evidence invites the provocative hypothesis that what is left over is a phantom arm movement—a movement of an arm that has been amputated. After arm/hand amputation, many amputees report that they can generate voluntary movements of the phantom limb; that is, they can move the arm that was amputated. But what is it like to move an arm/hand that is not there? Here, we review what is currently known about phantom limb movements at three descriptive levels: the kinematic level, the muscle level, and the cortical level. We conclude that phantom arm movements are best conceptualized as the real movements of a dematerialized hand.

The European Union issued several directives in the field of energy efficiency which impact on the building sector in order to avoid a further increase of energy consumption and to mitigate climate change. In particular, the recast of the European Energy Performance of Buildings supports the improvement of buildings energy performance and introduces a new target, the Nearly Zero-Energy Building (NZEB) concept. Nowadays, the European Commission is shifting attention towards the district level and post-carbon cities and Net Zero-Energy District (NZED) targets are emerging. In order to evaluate alternative strategies for the construction of NZED, according to a socio-economic point of view, different aspects and impacts have to be considered. This paper studies the NZED concept and proposes an evaluation method developed from the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) in order to include extra-economic benefits generated by the project. The proposed approach is applied on a real case concerning the energy requalification of a NZED in Turin (Italy).

Significance Estimation of intentions from the observation of other people’s actions has been proposed to rely on the same motor chain organization supporting the execution of intentional actions. However, the nature of the mechanism by which a specific neuronal chain is selected among possible alternatives during action observation remains obscure. Our study shows that in absence of discriminative contextual cues, subtle changes in the kinematics of the observed action inform mapping to the most probable chain. These results shed light on the importance of kinematics for the attribution of intentions to actions., The ability to understand intentions based on another’s movements is crucial for human interaction. This ability has been ascribed to the so-called motor chaining mechanism: anytime a motor chain is activated (e.g., grasp-to-drink), the observer attributes to the agent the corresponding intention (i.e., to drink) from the first motor act (i.e., the grasp). However, the mechanisms by which a specific chain is selected in the observer remain poorly understood. In the current study, we investigate the possibility that in the absence of discriminative contextual cues, slight kinematic variations in the observed grasp inform mapping to the most probable chain. Chaining of motor acts predicts that, in a sequential grasping task (e.g., grasp-to-drink), electromyographic (EMG) components that are required for the final act [e.g., the mouth-opening mylohyoid (MH) muscle] show anticipatory activation. To test this prediction, we used MH EMG, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS; MH motor-evoked potentials), and predictive models of movement kinematics to measure the level and timing of MH activation during the execution (Experiment 1) and the observation (Experiment 2) of reach-to-grasp actions. We found that MH-related corticobulbar excitability during grasping observation varied as a function of the goal (to drink or to pour) and the kinematics of the observed grasp. These results show that subtle changes in movement kinematics drive the selection of the most probable motor chain, allowing the observer to link an observed act to the agent’s intention.

Is it possible to perceive others' mental states? Are mental states visible in others' behavior? In contrast to the traditional view that mental states are hidden and not directly accessible to perception, in recent years a phenomenologically-motivated account of social cognition has emerged: direct social perception. However, despite numerous published articles that both defend and critique direct perception, researchers have made little progress in articulating the conditions under which direct perception of others' mental states is possible. This paper proposes an empirically anchored approach to the observability of others' mentality - not just in the weak sense of discussing relevant empirical evidence for and against the phenomenon of interest, but also, and more specifically, in the stronger sense of identifying an experimental strategy for measuring the observability of mental states and articulating the conditions under which mental states are observable. We conclude this article by reframing the problem of direct perception in terms of establishing a definable and measurable relationship between movement features and perceived mental states.

Finding the most appropriate matching between envelope features and HVAC system configurations in function of different climates results fundamental for minimizing buildings’ energy consumptions. The research aims at presenting the most energy-performing HVAC system configurations for high-performing buildings. Different configurations were modeled for new non-residential Reference Buildings in seven European cities, using dynamic simulation software EnergyPlus and some evaluation tools specifically set to emulate the energy performance of some specific HVAC technologies. Finally, the results obtained were compared in order to outline some conclusions, useful as guidelines for optimizing the choice of HVAC systems in function of climate conditions.

Highlights • Observation of others’ actions provides a shared experience of objects acted upon. • Observation of grasping movements provides a shared experience of object weight. • Object weight can be predictively judged from the kinematics of real grasps. • Weight judgements are also possible from the observation of pantomimed grasps., Observation of others’ actions has been proposed to provide a shared experience of the properties of objects acted upon. We report results that suggest a similar form of shared experience may be gleaned from the observation of pantomimed grasps, i.e., grasps aimed at pretended objects. In a weight judgment task, participants were asked to observe a hand reaching towards and grasping either a real or imagined glass, and to predictively judge its weight. Results indicate that participants were able to discriminate whether the to-be-grasped glass was empty, and thus light, or full, and thus heavy. Worthy of further investigation, this finding suggests that by observing others’ movements we can make predictions, and form expectations about the characteristics of objects that exist only in others’ minds.

To meet the European targets for achieving high-performing buildings, the refurbishment of the existing building stock and, in particular, of historical buildings represents a great challenge. The research aims at identifying the most energy-effective HVAC configuration for retrofitting historical hotels in Mediterranean area, where the objective is to minimize the consumptions for both space heating and cooling. A Reference Building for an historical hotel was simulated in five Mediterranean cities and different HVAC solutions were assessed, using EnergyPlus software coupled with tools specifically set to emulate the energy behaviour of certain HVAC technologies, aiming to highlight the most efficient alternative.

Among co-benefits that energy efficiency interventions in buildings entail, occupants’ improved comfort is one of the most acknowledged. In this study, a monetary valuation of improvements in comfort conditions in accommodation facilities was carried out. With an interdisciplinary approach to the problem, the evaluation was two-folded, aimed at monetizing co-benefits and extra costs of improved indoor environmental quality. Comfort co-benefits were estimated by employing the economic-based Contingent Valuation Method. In this framework, survey results allowed calculating respondents’ Willingness to Pay for excellent comfort conditions in hotel rooms, quantified in a 14% increase of the room rate. The energy approach, based on dynamic simulations, allowed to quantify extra costs of improved thermal condition in a reference existing hotel. These findings suggest that guests’ appreciation of comfort is higher than the investment costs required to provide them with comfortable conditions and highlight that energy efficiency measures are often necessary to reach the desired indoor comfort level.

Urban districts should evolve towards a more sustainable infrastructure and greener energy carriers. The utmost challenge is the smart integration and control, within the existing infrastructure, of new information and energy technologies (such as sensors, appliances, electric and thermal power and storage devices) that are able to provide multi-services based on multi-actors and multi and interchangeable energy carriers. In recent years, the Municipality of Torino represents an experimental scenario, in which practical experiences in the below-areas have taken place through a number of projects: 1. energy efficiency in building; 2. smart energy grids management and smart metering; 3. biowaste-to-energy: mixed urban/industrial waste management with enhanced energy recovery from biogas. This work provides an overview and update on the most interesting initiatives of smart energy management in the urban context of Torino, with an analysis and quantification of the advantages gained in terms of energy and environmental efficiency.

Wedge prisms shifting the visual field laterally create a mismatch between the straight ahead position signalled by vision and that encoded by extraretinal and head-on-trunk proprioceptive information. Short-term adaptation to left-deviating prisms in normal subjects results in a visuomotor attentional bias towards the right-hand side (aftereffect). Prismatic adaptation (PA) is usually induced through a training consisting in repeated ballistic movements of the dominant arm towards visual targets, while participants are wearing prismatic goggles. The present study demonstrates that an original oculomotor PA procedure with leftward deviating prisms-without pointing movements and only consisting in repeated gaze shifts towards visual targets-can induce a rightward bias in normal subjects as assessed by visual straight ahead and line bisection tasks (Experiments 1 and 2). We show that oculomotor PA induces a bias in line bisection similar to that reported after visuomotor PA (Experiment 2). We suggest that a conflict between retinal, extraretinal and proprioceptive information about the straight ahead location causes the observed effects. In follow-up experiments 3, 4, and 5, we demonstrate that neither eye deviation without prisms nor shift of the visual field without eye deviation induces PA biases. We propose that an optimal integration model of visual and proprioceptive inputs can best account for the observed results.

Background Deficits in social communication and interaction are among the core symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Intention understanding in particular has been shown to be impaired in ASD. However, only one previous study has explicitly assessed the understanding of communicative intentions in ASD. Thus, the aim of the present study was to compare neural activation during the observation of communicative and non-communicative actions in participants with ASD and typically developing (TD) controls using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Based on recent findings that show that the degree of involvement of the observer has an impact on neural activation, the present study included first- and third-person perspective stimuli. Method Twenty-five male TD (mean age 20.41 ± 3.39) and twenty-two male participants with ASD (mean age 18.60 ± 3.55) were included. Stimuli consisted of videos in which actors performed an action with an everyday object. Actions were either private or communicative; communicative actions were either directed at the observer (first-person) or at a third person. Results The ASD group showed reduced activation in the human middle temporal complex (hMT+) across all conditions. However, modulation of activation in response to different conditions remained intact in ASD. Additionally, while TD showed an increase in premotor cortex (PMC) activation in response to communicative actions directed at them, the ASD group showed a decrease in activation. Conclusions These findings suggest an early processing deficit with regard to human biological motion in ASD. Furthermore, results reflect a reduced preparedness for social interactions in ASD compared to TD when addressed directly.

This paper aims at investigating the action prediction problem from a pure kinematic perspective. Specifically, we address the problem of recognizing future actions, indeed human intentions, underlying a same initial (and apparently unrelated) motor act. This study is inspired by neuroscientific findings asserting that motor acts at the very onset are embedding information about the intention with which are performed, even when different intentions originate from a same class of movements. To demonstrate this claim in computational and empirical terms, we designed an ad hoc experiment and built a new 3D and 2D dataset where, in both training and testing, we analyze a same class of grasping movements underlying different intentions. We investigate how much the intention discriminants generalize across subjects, discovering that each subject tends to affect the prediction by his/her own bias. Inspired by the domain adaptation problem, we propose to interpret each subject as a domain, leading to a novel subject adversarial paradigm. The proposed approach favorably copes with our new problem, boosting the considered baseline features encoding 2D and 3D information and which do not exploit the subject information.

Although it is well established that fronto-parietal regions are active during action observation, whether they play a causal role in the ability to infer others’ intentions from visual kinematics remains undetermined. In experiments reported here, we combined offline continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) with computational modeling to reveal and causally probe single-trial computations in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Participants received cTBS over the left anterior IPL and the left IFG pars orbitalis, in separate sessions, before completing an intention discrimination task (discriminate intention of observed reach-to-grasp acts) or a kinematic discrimination task unrelated to intention (discriminate peak wrist height of the same acts). We targeted intention-sensitive regions whose fMRI activity, recorded when observing the same reach-to-grasp acts, could accurately discriminate intention. We found that transient disruption of activity of the left IPL, but not the IFG, impaired the observer’s ability to attribute intention to action. Kinematic discrimination unrelated to intention, in contrast, was largely unaffected. Computational analyses of how encoding – the mapping of intention to movement kinematics – and readout – the mapping of kinematics to intention choices – intersect at the single-trial level revealed that IPL cTBS did not diminish the overall sensitivity of intention readout to movement kinematics. Rather, it selectively misaligned intention readout with respect to encoding, thereby deteriorating the mapping from informative kinematic features to intention choices. These results provide causal evidence of how left anterior IPL computes the mapping from kinematics to intentions.