View article

Seminal studies in monkeys report that the viewing of actions performed by other individuals activates frontal and parietal cortical areas typically involved in action planning and execution [1–3]. That mirroring actions might rely on both motor and somatosensory components is suggested by reports that action observation and execution increase neural activity in motor [4–13] and in somatosensory areas [8–10, 14–17]. This occurs not only during observation of naturalistic movements [4–17] but also during the viewing of biomechanically impossible movements that tap the afferent component of action, possibly by eliciting strong somatic feelings in the onlooker [18, 19]. Although somatosensory feedback is inherently linked to action execution [20], information on the possible causative role of frontal and parietal cortices in simulating motor and sensory action components is lacking. By combining low-frequency …