Goal-Directed Actions Activate the Face-Sensitive Posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus and Fusiform Gyrus in the Absence of Human-Like Perceptual Cues

The conditions under which we identify entities as animate agents and the neural mechanisms supporting this ability are central questions in social neuroscience. Prior studies have focused upon 2 perceptual cues for signaling animacy: 1) surface features representing body forms such as faces, torsos, and limbs and 2) motion cues associated with biological forms. Here, we consider a third cue-the goal-directedness of an action. Regions in the social brain network, such as the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and fusiform face area (FFA), are activated by human-like motion and body form perceptual cues signaling animacy. Here, we investigate whether these same brain regions are activated by goal-directed motion even when performed by entities that lack human-like perceptual cues. We observed an interaction effect whereby the presence of either human-like perceptual cues or goal-directed actions was sufficient to activate the right pSTS and FFA. Only stimuli that lacked human-like perceptual cues and goal-directed actions failed to activate the pSTS and FFA at the same level.