Active processing of biological motion perception: an ERP study

The purpose of this study was to measure event-related potentials (ERPs) to clarify how attention affects neural activity during the visual perception of biological motion (BM). Thirteen healthy subjects observed BM or scrambled motion (SM). For SM, each point had the same velocity vector as in BM, but the initial starting positions were randomized. Each BM and SM was overlaid with ten noise dots and four rectangles. For the rectangles, one was or was not rotated 90° relative to the others. Subjects were required to undertake two kinds of visual tasks. For the attention-to-motion condition, subjects directed their attention to the type of motion. For the attention-to-rectangle condition, subjects directed their attention to the rotational angle of the overlaid rectangles. As in our earlier study, the ERP response to the perception of BM had two negative components at ∼200 ms (N200) and ∼330 ms (N330) in both attentional conditions. Our analysis focused on the amplitude of the second negative component, which was sensitive to BM. There was a significant interaction between attention and the type of motion regarding the amplitude of N330. Specifically, the amplitude of N330 in response to BM was greater in the attention-to-motion condition than in the attention-to-rectangle condition, and was greater than the amplitude of the response to SM in the attention-to-motion condition. These results suggest that in this experimental design, processing of BM is modulated by attention.