Grasping with Tools: Corticospinal Excitability Reflects Observed Hand Movements

Although facilitation of the corticospinal system during action observation is widely accepted, it remains controversial whether this facilitation reflects a replica of the observed movements or the goal of the observed motor acts. In the present study, we asked whether, when an object is grasped by using a tool, corticospinal facilitation represents 1) the movements of the hand, 2) the movements of the tool, or 3) the distal goal of the action. To address this question, we recorded motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) to transcranial magnetic stimulation while participants observed a hand reaching and grasping a mothball by using 3 types of pliers, requiring different hand-tool movements to achieve the same goal (grasping the object). We found that MEPs recorded from the opponens pollicis and from the first dorsal interosseous reflected the observed hand movements rather than the movements of the tool or the distal goal of the action. These results suggest that during observation of tool actions, detailed motor matching recruits online the same muscles as those used in the observed action.