Motor activation in response to perception of action-related stimuli may depend on a resonance mechanism subserving action understanding. The extent to which this mechanism is innate or learned from sensorimotor experience is still unclear. Here, we recorded EEG while people with paraplegia or tetraplegia consequent to spinal cord injury (SCI) and healthy control participants were presented with action sounds produced by body parts (mouth, hands or feet) that were or were not affected by SCI. Non-action sounds were used as further control. We observed reduced brain activation in subjects affected by SCI at both pre- and post-stimulus latencies specifically for those actions whose effector was disconnected by the spinal lesion (i.e., hand sound for tetraplegia and leg sound for both paraplegia and tetraplegia). Correlation analyses showed that these modulations were functionally linked with the chronicity of the lesion, indicating that the longer the time the lesion- EEG data acquisition interval and/or the more the lesion occurred at a young age, the weaker was the cortical activity in response to these action sounds. Tellingly, source estimations confirmed that these modulations originated from a deficit in the motor resonance mechanism, by showing diminished activity in premotor (during prediction and perception) and near the primary motor (during perception) areas. Such dissociation along the cortical hierarchy is consistent with both previous reports in healthy subjects and with hierarchical predictive coding accounts. Overall, these data expand on the notion that sensorimotor experience maintains the cortical representations relevant to anticipate and perceive action-related stimuli.

中文翻译：

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预测脊髓损伤患者的声音并将其编码为动作翻译

响应于动作相关刺激的感知的运动激活可能取决于促进动作理解的共振机制。这种机制在多大程度上是与生俱来的，还是从感觉运动经验中习得的，目前尚不清楚。在这里，我们记录了脑电图，同时向因脊髓损伤 (SCI) 导致截瘫或四肢瘫痪的患者和健康对照参与者呈现受或未受 SCI 影响的身体部位（嘴、手或脚）产生的动作声音。非动作声音被用作进一步的控制。我们观察到受 SCI 影响的受试者在刺激前和刺激后潜伏期的大脑激活均减少，特别是那些效应器因脊柱病变而断开的动作（即，四肢瘫痪时发出手声，截瘫和四肢瘫痪时发出腿声）。相关分析表明，这些调节与病变的慢性性存在功能性联系，表明病变-脑电图数据采集间隔的时间越长和/或病变发生在年轻时的次数越多，皮层反应的活动就越弱到这些动作声音。引人注目的是，来源估计证实了这些调制源于运动共振机制的缺陷，通过显示运动前区（在预测和感知期间）和初级运动附近（在感知期间）区域的活动减少。这种沿着皮质层次结构的分离与之前对健康受试者的报告以及分层预测编码账户是一致的。总体而言，这些数据扩展了以下概念：感觉运动体验维持与预测和感知动作相关刺激相关的皮层表征。