Thus, attentional load elicited by MOT, as suggested by Jovicich

et al. (2001), remains a reasonable explanation for the found activations in the pars opercularis. Future studies will have to address this issue. Implications of PM activation “Predictions that allow one to anticipate features such as the movements of objects and the behaviors of other animals are of great adaptive benefit” (Zacks et al. 2011, p. 4057). More precisely, predictions of dynamic perceptual events are a prerequisite for goal-directed manipulations of and beneficial reactions to social and physical environments. For instance, only through the prediction of biological movements are we able to successfully engage in cooperative

Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical or competitive interactions with conspecifics. Against this background, let us consider a tangible example to understand the real world significance of the abstract MOT paradigm. Picture a herd of animals. A predator observing the herd is keen to single out and keep track Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of its weakest member. From the observer’s perspective, this individual animal, as it trots about, is repeatedly occluded by trees, rocks, or other animals. Its bodily outline is in constant change while it adjusts its movement directions. Changes in lighting can lead to variations in optical refractions, resulting in the animal’s fur to be perceived in different colors. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Transferring Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical this scene to the MOT paradigm, behavioral results suggest that the human brain is well adapted to compensate for such fluctuations in visual input during tracking (Scholl and Pylyshyn 1999; Bahrami 2003). Importantly, in the presence of moreover nondiscriminatory or ambiguous object surface features, the continuity of target identities appears to strongly rely on spatiotemporal information, such as motion trajectories (Franconeri et al. 2006). We propose that motion trajectories are

not only processed up to the point of current target locations, but that their future courses are extrapolated via sensorimotor anticipation processes (Chaminade et al. 2001). Previous Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical brain imaging studies provided evidence of the PM to be a neural correlate of the prediction of familiar human actions (Stadler et al. 2011, 2012) and inanimate events (Schubotz 2007; Wolfensteller et al. 2007). Accordingly, PM activations in the current study are in line AV-951 with the idea that sensorimotor prediction processes were also recruited during MOT. This finding could indicate that, during the parallel tracking of inanimate entities performing arbitrary motions, prediction processes are employed similar to those used to pursue and anticipate goal-directed movements of biological agents. Although this interpretation is pure speculation at this point, this would not be the first study to report PM activation during the prediction of unfamiliar, arbitrary movement. Cross et al.