Bilateral engagement of the occipito-temporal cortex in response to dance kinematics in experts

Abstract

Previous evidence has shown neuroplastic changes in brain anatomy and connectivity associated with the acquisition of professional visuomotor skills. Reduced hemispherical asymmetry was found in the sensorimotor and visual areas in expert musicians and athletes compared with non-experts. Moreover, increased expertise with faces, body, and objects resulted in an enhanced engagement of the occipito-temporal cortex (OTC) during stimulus observation. The present study aimed at investigating whether intense and extended practice with dance would result in an enhanced symmetric response of OTC at an early stage of action processing. Expert ballet dancers and non-dancer controls were presented with videos depicting ballet steps during EEG recording. The observation of the moving dancer elicited a posterior N2 component, being larger over the left hemisphere in dancers than controls. The source reconstruction (swLORETA) of the negativity showed the engagement of the bilateral inferior and middle temporal regions in experts, while right-lateralized activity was found in controls. The dancers also showed an early P2 and enhanced P300 responses, indicating faster stimulus processing and subsequent recognition. This evidence seemed to suggest expertise-related increased sensitivity of the OTC in encoding body kinematics. Thus, we speculated that long-term whole-body practice would result in enriched and refined action processing.