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Extrastriate body area in human occipital cortex responds to the performance of motor actions

Nature Neuroscience volume 7, pages 542–548 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

A region in human lateral occipital cortex (the 'extrastriate body area' or EBA) has been implicated in the perception of body parts. Here we report functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) evidence that the EBA is strongly modulated by limb (arm, foot) movements to a visual target stimulus, even in the absence of visual feedback from the movement. Therefore, the EBA responds not only during the perception of other people's body parts, but also during goal-directed movements of the observer's body parts. In addition, both limb movements and saccades to a detected stimulus produced stronger signals than stimulus detection without motor movements ('covert detection') in the calcarine sulcus and lingual gyrus. These motor-related modulations cannot be explained by simple visual or attentional factors related to the target stimulus, and suggest a potentially widespread influence of actions on visual cortex.

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Figure 1: Group-averaged movement-related BOLD responses in the EBA.
Figure 2: Movement-related BOLD responses in the EBA from a single subject (experiment 2).
Figure 3: Group-averaged movement-related BOLD responses in medial occipital cortex.
Figure 4: BOLD responses in the EBA from a single subject during the pointing and imagery conditions.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from National Institutes of Health (EY00379, EY001248, 5P50NS06833). We thank A. Snyder and M. McAvoy for image analysis and statistical advice; and C. Lewis, T. Phan, F. Miezin and M. Cowan for technical support. We also thank P. Downing and N. Kanwisher for providing the photographs of human body parts and object parts.

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, 4525 Scott Avenue, St. Louis, 63110, Missouri, USA

    Serguei V Astafiev, Christine M Stanley & Maurizio Corbetta

  2. Department of Neurology, Washington University School of Medicine, 4525 Scott Avenue, St. Louis, 63110, Missouri, USA

    Gordon L Shulman & Maurizio Corbetta

  3. Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington University School of Medicine, 4525 Scott Avenue, St. Louis, 63110, Missouri, USA

    Maurizio Corbetta

Authors
  1. Serguei V Astafiev
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  2. Christine M Stanley
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  4. Maurizio Corbetta
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maurizio Corbetta.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Fig. 1

Movement-related BOLD responses in the medial occipital cortex, group-averaged data. The statistical map shows significant differences between right hand Pointing, right Foot pointing, and covert Attention (Experiment 2). Graphs show the group-averaged BOLD timecourses, averaged over target direction (see legend for Fig. 1), from visual and motor regions active in the statistical map. Calc. S/Cu = Calcarine sulcus/Cuneus, LG = lingual gyrus, SMA = supplementary motor area, SII = secondary somatosensory area. Error bars represent s.e.m. (JPG 35 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 2

Pointing vs. Imagery in the EBA (single subjects). Coronal slices on which significant BOLD responses have been superimposed. (a) Pointing with right hand, no visual feedback; (b) Imagining of pointing with right hand; (c) EBA localizer, observation of body parts vs. observation of object parts; (d) EBA voxels with significantly greater activity during pointing than imagery. Graphics show percent signal change response for Pointing (P), Imagery (I), and Saccade (S) tasks vs. fixation baseline in left and right EBA from voxels in (d) (top row), response to body parts (BP) and object parts (OP) vs. fixation baseline from the same voxels in (d) (middle row) and response for Pointing (P) and Imagery (I) tasks vs. fixation baseline in the entire left and right EBA (i.e. from significantly (z = 2.6, P < 0.01 uncorrected) active voxels in EBA localizer) (bottom row). Error bars represent s.e.m. (JPG 75 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 3

Attention-control for movement-related modulation of EBA. (a) Planning activity in EBA for right Hand pointing, Saccade, and Attention tasks. The BOLD response is time-locked to the presentation of a 100 ms foveal arrow cueing one of two peripheral locations followed by a 4.3 second delay. Note similar preparatory response in EBA for pointing and covert attention, and weaker response for planning an eye movement. (b) BOLD response time-locked to the presentation of targets at attended (valid) and unattended (invalid) locations during right hand Pointing (R. hand), right foot pointing (R. foot), and Attention tasks. There is a stronger response during invalid than valid trials, which is effector-independent. Moreover, the response for Pointing and Attention is not significantly different. Error bars represent s.e.m. (GIF 10 kb)

Supplementary Methods (PDF 12 kb)

Supplementary Tables 1-4 (PDF 23 kb)

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Astafiev, S., Stanley, C., Shulman, G. et al. Extrastriate body area in human occipital cortex responds to the performance of motor actions. Nat Neurosci 7, 542–548 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1241

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