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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Cristiana Cavina-Pratesi, Dr Magdelena Ietswaart
Background: Most of us are poor at faking actions. Kinematic studies have shown that when pretending to pick up imagined objects (pantomimed actions), we move and shape our hands quite differently from when grasping real ones. These differences between real and pantomimed actions have been linked to separate brain pathways specialized for different kinds of visuomotor guidance. Yet professional magicians regularly use pantomimed actions to deceive audiences.Methodology and Principal Findings: In this study, we tested whether, despite their skill, magicians might still show kinematic differences between grasping actions made toward real versus imagined objects. We found that their pantomimed actions in fact closely resembled real grasps when the object was visible (but displaced) (Experiment 1), but failed to do so when the object was absent (Experiment 2).Conclusions and Significance: We suggest that although the occipito-parietal visuomotor system in the dorsal stream is designed to guide goal-directed actions, prolonged practice may enable it to calibrate actions based on visual inputs displaced from the action.
Author(s): Cavina-Pratesi C, Kuhn G, Ietswaart M, Milner AD
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: PLoS ONE
Year: 2011
Volume: 6
Issue: 2
Print publication date: 09/02/2011
Date deposited: 13/08/2014
ISSN (electronic): 1932-6203
Publisher: Public Library of Science
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016568
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016568
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