ABSTRACT
Natural body actions can be thought of as consisting of continuous and complex sequences of static postures, linked by motion. The first claim of this chapter is that cells in the anterior part of the superior temporal sulcus (STSa) in the macaque monkey are tuned to the visual analysis of such complex body actions. The neural representations constructed in the STSa first of all form a direct visual description of these actions. Some cell populations in the STSa go one step further in that they are sensitive to multiple, visually distinct stimuli, such as multiple views of the same animate object or action. Other cells are tuned to conceptually related visual stimuli, such as multiple body signals of directed attention. We postulate that these cells play a role in forming representations of socially relevant concepts, such as another’s attention.
