An ERP Study Of Embodied Decision Making

This study aims to identify whether motor observation and mental imitationshare the same neural substrates, and further, to probe whether muscle state (tight vs.relax) and frame (win vs. loss) would affect risk decision-making behavior and itsevent-related potentials by presenting subjects with two different kinds of pictures,followed by letting subjects imitate the muscle states of the characters on the pictures,and then complete a decision-making task. Results show that both the main effect ofmuscle state/frame and their interaction effect are significant. Compared to relaxedmuscle state and win frame, subjects in tight muscle state and loss frame conditiontend to avoid risk more often. Both motor observation and mental imitation processshow similar trends on N2and LPC, indicating that they share mutual neuralsubstrates. However, there is a significant difference between P200and P300duringthe risk decision-making process. Subjects in tight muscle state and win framecondition show lower P200amplitude but higher P300amplitude than that of relaxmuscle state and loss frame condition.