Modulation of Motor Resonance by Sensorimotor Learning: Assessing Specificity and Stability of the Matching Between Action Perception and Execution

The main goals of this project were to investigate the effect of sensorimotor learning based on the simple sensory stimuli on the motor resonance and to assess possible associations between the sensorimotor learning rate and facilitation of the corticospinal excitability during the action observation. Our results demonstrate that chosen behavioral task did induce learning effect in participants, as reflected by significant decrease of RTs across four training days, and that experimental design of the transcranial magnetic stimulation session was sufficient for provoking motor resonance effect, as reflected by the significant increase in the facilitation of corticospinal excitability during observation of the button-pressing and pinch-to-grip movements compared to the observation of the static hand. Moreover, significant negative correlation was found between the learning rate in the non-dominant hand and motor resonance on the post-training session in the dominant hand during the observation of the pinch-to-grip movement. However, we did not observe changes in the pattern of motor resonance between the pre-training and post-training sessions.