www.elsevier.com/locate/brainres Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Research Report Visual Influences on sensorimotor EEG responses during observation of hand actions Ashley R. Drew a,n , Lorna C. Quandt b , Peter J. Marshall a Q1 a Temple University, Department of Psychology, 1701N. 13th St. Philadelphia, PA 19122, United State Q2 s b University of Pennsylvania, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, 3710 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States article info Article history: Accepted 23 November 2014 Keywords: Action observation Mu rhythm EEG Visual perspective abstract There is growing interest within the field of social-cognitive neuroscience in the dynamics of sensorimotor EEG rhythms during the observation of actions performed by others. However, there remain important gaps in the literature regarding the effects of perceptual aspects of the observed hand movements. This study investigated two visual influences on the EEG response to hand actions. Specifically, the perspective of the action in relation to the participant (egocentric/allocentric) was varied and the effect of the hand used to carry out the action (left/right) was also assessed. While EEG was recorded, 28 undergraduate participants observed video clips showing an actor’s hand reaching for, grasping, and lifting a cylindrical object across four conditions (right-hand egocentric, left-hand ego- centric, right-hand allocentric, and left-hand allocentric). For actions viewed from an egocentric perspective, significantly greater event-related desynchronization (ERD) was present in the 7–9 Hz range over right mid-frontal, right central, and bilateral mid-parietal sites for right-handed actions compared to left-handed actions. In addition, greater ERD was observed within the 7–9 Hz band during the observation of right-handed egocentric actions compared to actions viewed from the allocentric perspective. This finding was present at bilateral central and mid-parietal sites, and emerged as an anticipatory effect prior to the onset of the observed hand movements. & 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. 1. Introduction 1.1. Linkages between action production and action perception There continues to be a good deal of interest across the field of social-cognitive neuroscience in delineating the brain networks that are active during the observation of others’ actions (Molenberghs et al., 2012). This interest has been partly driven by the suggestion that neural processes involved in executing an action are also active while watch- ing others perform a similar action (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2010). Although the nature and function of these neural overlaps remain a topic of debate, they have been proposed BRES : 43952 Model7 pp: À 1210ðcol:fig: : NILÞ 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2014.11.048 0006-8993/& 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. n Corresponding author.. E-mail addresses: ashdrew@temple.edu (A.R. Drew), lquandt@mail.med.upenn.edu (L.C. Quandt), pjmarsh@temple.edu (P.J. Marshall). brain research ] ( ]]]] ) ]]] – ]]] Please cite this article as: Drew, A.R., et al., Visual Influences on sensorimotor EEG responses during observation of hand actions. Brain Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2014.11.048