Motor resonance is modulated by an object’s weight distribution
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies showed that corticospinal excitability (CSE) is modulated during observation of object lifting, an effect termed ‘motor resonance’. Specifically, motor resonance is driven by movement features indicating object weight, such as object size or observed movement kinematics. We investigated in 16 humans (8 females) whether motor resonance is also modulated by an object’s weight distribution. Participants were asked to lift an inverted T-shaped manipulandum with interchangeable center of mass after first observing an actor lift the same manipulandum. Participants and actor were instructed to minimize object roll and rely on constrained digit positioning during lifting. Constrained positioning was either collinear (i.e., fingertips on the same height) or noncollinear (i.e., fingertip on the heavy side higher than the one on the light side). The center of mass changed unpredictably before the actor’s lifts and participants were explained that their weight distribution always matched the actor’s one. Last, TMS was applied during both lift observation and planning of lift actions. Our results showed that CSE was similarly modulated during lift observation and planning: when participants observed or planned lifts in which the weight distribution was asymmetrically right-sided, CSE recorded from the thumb muscles was significantly increased compared to when the weight distribution was left-sided. During both lift observation and planning, this increase seemed to be primarily driven by the weight distribution and not specifically by the (observed) digit positioning or muscle contraction. In conclusion, our results indicate that complex intrinsic object properties such as weight distributions can modulate activation of the motor system during both observation and planning of lifting actions. Highlights • Motor resonance is observation-induced activity in the observer’s motor system • We used a dyadic lifting task of objects with asymmetrical weight distribution • We investigated which movement features modulate motor resonance • Motor resonance is modulated by the object’s weight distribution • Motor resonance is driven by observed and planned digit positioning
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".