By investigating how intentions are extracted from body motion during interaction with conspecifics, I.MOVE.U pioneers a new area of research at the intersection of motor cognition and social cognition: to what extent is kinematic specification of social intention effective? Are observers attuned to intention information conveyed by action kinematics? Does online interaction involve the same processes implied in offline social interactions?
We are addressing these issues at different levels of analysis by combining advanced methods in psychophysics and neuroscience (functional MRI, TMS) with kinematics and virtual reality technologies. For the first time, to investigate real-time social interaction we are employing visual biological motion stimuli directly dependent on the actual behaviour of participants.  More about the project...