Evidence map›Paper›PMID 37286553›Full record

ArticleNature communications2023

A shared neural code for the physics of actions and object events.

Seda Karakose-Akbiyik, Alfonso Caramazza, Moritz F Wurm

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
17citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
11.3field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 34 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Action execution and observation in autistic adults: A systematic review of fMRI studies.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025
    Pooled it
  2. Dissociation between physical reasoning and tool use in individuals with left hemisphere brain damage.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2026
    Article
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  11. The Representational Organization of Static and Dynamic Visual Features in the Human Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025
    Article
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  14. Dissociating goal from outcome during action observation.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024
    Article
  15. Graspable foods and tools elicit similar responses in visual cortex.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024
    Article
  16. Category-Selective Representation of Relationships in the Visual Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024
    Article
  17. The Role of Agentive and Physical Forces in the Neural Representation of Motion Events.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

Seda Karakose-AkbiyikDepartment of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. sakbiyik@fas.harvard.edu.ORCID 0000-0001-6720-8859
Alfonso CaramazzaDepartment of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Moritz F WurmCenter for Mind/Brain Sciences - CIMeC, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy.
Harvard University · USUniversity of Trento · IT

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Observing others' actions recruits frontoparietal and posterior temporal brain regions - also called the action observation network. It is typically assumed that these regions support recognizing actions of animate entities (e.g., person jumping over a box). However, objects can also participate in events with rich meaning and structure (e.g., ball bouncing over a box). So far, it has not been clarified which brain regions encode information specific to goal-directed actions or more general information that also defines object events. Here, we show a shared neural code for visually presented actions and object events throughout the action observation network. We argue that this neural representation captures the structure and physics of events regardless of animacy. We find that lateral occipitotemporal cortex encodes information about events that is also invariant to stimulus modality. Our results shed light onto the representational profiles of posterior temporal and frontoparietal cortices, and their roles in encoding event information.

Indexed as

Brain MappingMagnetic Resonance ImagingCerebral CortexHumansPhotic StimulationPhysicsTemporal Lobe

Identifiers

PMID37286553
PMCPMC10247699
OpenAlexW4379769232

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.