Biological motion

A similar expertise effect has been observed in different types of action, such as music making, language, scientific thinking, basketball, and walking.

The phenomenon of human sensitivity to biological motion was first documented by Swedish perceptual psychologist, Gunnar Johansson, in 1973.

Johansson attached light bulbs to body parts and joints of actors performing various actions in the dark.

The mirror neurons were initially observed in the premotor cortex, however they were also found in supramarginal gyrus and temporoparietal junction, areas of the brain that is associated with biological motion processing.

Today, the discovery of mirror neurons has led to an explosion of research on biological motion and action perception and understanding in research fields such as social and affective neuroscience, language, action, motion capture technology, and artificial intelligence such as androids and virtual embodied agents, and the uncanny valley phenomenon.

In a large study with stroke patients, significant regions that was found to be associated with deficient biological motion perception include the superior temporal sulcus and premotor cortex.

[5] Recent cognitive neuroscience research has begun to focus on the brain structures and neural networks that are involved in biological motion processing.

[7] Also, premotor cortex has been shown to be active during biological motion processing, showing that the mirror neuron system is recruited for perception and understanding of PLD.

[8] Further evidence from another study shows that the default mode network is essential in distinguishing between biological and non-biological motion.

In the next part of the experiment, different participants were asked to identify the same point-light display animals but with static images instead of moving dots.

Five-year-olds and adults gave results of chance performance, while the younger participants were omitted due to the higher error rates from the harder nature of the task.

Those findings suggest that humans use similar cognitive functions to identify biological motion and words, whether it is presented through written language or point-light displays.