Dimitrios Kourtis

University of Stirling · Department of Psychology

Previous work suggests that perception of an object automatically facilitates actions related to object grasping and manipulation. Recently, the notion of automaticity has been challenged by behavioral studies suggesting that dangerous objects elicit aversive affordances that interfere with encoding of an object's motor properties; however, related...

The ability to safely negotiate the world on foot takes humans years to develop, reflecting the huge cognitive demands associated with real‐time planning and control of walking. Despite the importance of walking, methodological limitations mean that surprisingly little is known about the neural and cognitive processes that support ambulatory motor...

We investigated whether communicative cues help observers to make sense of human interaction. We recorded EEG from an observer monitoring two individuals who were occasionally communicating with each other via either mutual eye contact and/or pointing gestures, and then jointly attending to the same object or attending to different objects that wer...

div>Human-robot joint action is a key requirement in many advanced robotic applications where robots are not only expected to work alongside humans but also collaborate with them in the performance of physical tasks. Robots are already programmed to model and predict human actions in order to ensure smooth collaboration and overall task efficiency...

div>Human-robot joint action is a key requirement in many advanced robotic applications where robots are not only expected to work alongside humans but also collaborate with them in the performance of physical tasks. Robots are already programmed to model and predict human actions in order to ensure smooth collaboration and overall task efficiency...

div>Human-robot joint action is a key requirement in many advanced robotic applications where robots are not only expected to work alongside humans but also collaborate with them in the performance of physical tasks. Robots are already programmed to model and predict human actions in order to ensure smooth collaboration and overall task efficiency...

The ability to safely negotiate the world on foot takes years to develop in human infants, reflecting the huge cognitive demands associated with real-time dynamic planning and control of walking. Despite the importance of walking, surprisingly little is known about the neural and cognitive processes that support ambulatory motor control in humans....

Do people engaged in joint action form action plans that specify joint outcomes at the group level? EEG was recorded from pairs of participants who performed coordinated actions that could result in different postural configurations. To isolate individual and joint action planning processes, a pre-cue specified in advance the individual actions and...

Previous work has shown that the perception of a graspable object may automatically potentiate actions that are tailored to specific action-related features of the object (e.g., its size) and may be related to its immediate grasping as well as to its long-term, functional use. We investigated the neural correlates of function- and size-related obje...

Behavioral and neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that people process preferentially self-related information such as an image of their own face. Furthermore, people rapidly incorporate stimuli into their self-representation even if these stimuli do not have an intrinsic relation to self. In the present study, we investigated the time course of...

N2 following faces in experiment 2. The appendix contains an additional analysis of N2, which replicates the findings from experiment 1. (PDF)

We studied the potentially dissociable effects of handedness and consistency of hand preference on allocation of attention and movement planning. EEG was recorded from an equally balanced group of left- and right-handed participants with consistent or inconsistent hand preference. The participants viewed photos of graspable objects and responded to...

People often coordinate their actions with others' in pursuit of shared goals, yet little research has examined the neural processes by which people monitor whether shared goals have been achieved. The current study compared event-related potentials elicited by feedback indicating joint errors (resulting from two people's coordinated actions) and i...

We investigated whether people take into account an interaction partner's attentional focus and whether they represent in advance their partner's part of the task when planning to engage in a synchronous joint action. The experiment involved two participants planning and performing joint actions (i.e., synchronously lifting and clinking glasses), u...

Recent work suggests that social interaction modulates the sensorimotor simulation of an observed action. Recording electroencephalograms during a triadic social interaction, we investigated the effects of two specific aspects of social interaction on action simulation: the recent history of interaction and the distribution of individual parts of a...

We investigated whether people monitor the outcomes of their own and their partners' individual actions as well as the outcome of their combined actions when performing joint actions together. Pairs of pianists memorized both parts of a piano duet. Each pianist then performed one part while their partner performed the other; EEG was recorded from b...

It has been postulated that when people engage in joint actions they form internal representations not only of their part of the joint task but of their co-actors' parts of the task as well. However, empirical evidence for this claim is scarce. By means of high-density electroencephalography, this study investigated whether one represents and simul...

The ability to anticipate others' actions is crucial for social interaction. It has been shown that this ability relies on motor areas of the human brain that are not only active during action execution and action observation, but also during anticipation of another person's action. Recording electroencephalograms during a triadic social interactio...

Humans' inability to move fast and accurately at the same time is expressed in Fitts's law. It states that the movement time between targets depends on the index of difficulty, which is a function of the target width and the inter-target distance. The present study investigated the electrophysiological correlates of Fitts's law during action planni...

The ability to anticipate others' actions is crucial for social interaction. It has been shown that this ability relies on motor areas of the human brain that are not only active during action execution and action observation, but also during anticipation of another person's action. Recording electroencephalograms during a triadic social interactio...

Directing spatial attention or manual response selection by means of arrow cues elicits a characteristic sequence of lateralized ERP components. Van Velzen and Eimer (2003) proposed that one of these components, the EDAN (early directing-attention negativity) is not related to the control of spatial attention but is instead an N2pc in disguise, rel...

Neurophysiological studies in monkey have suggested that premotor and motor cortex may prepare for multiple movements simultaneously, sustained by cooperative and competitive interactions within and between the neural populations encoding different actions. Here, we investigate whether competition between alternative movement directions, manipulate...

This study explored the use of steady-state somatosensory evoked potentials (ssSEPs) as a continuous probe on the excitability of the somatosensory cortex during the foreperiod and the response time of a cued choice reaction time task. ssSEPs were elicited by electrical median nerve stimulation at the left and right wrist, using a stimulation frequ...

Previous behavioral work has shown the existence of both anticipatory and reactive grip force responses to predictable load perturbations, but how the brain implements anticipatory control remains unclear. Here we recorded electroencephalographs while participants were subjected to predictable and unpredictable external load perturbations. Particip...

We used the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) to investigate cortical mechanisms underlying the termination of muscle contraction. Active suppression and withdrawal of activation have been proposed as underlying mechanisms in isotonic and isometric relaxation. Experiment 1 investigated isotonic wrist extension/release from extension. Experiment...

Neural representations of time for the judgment of temporal durations are reflected in electroencephalographic (EEG) slow brain potentials, as established in time production and perception tasks. Here, we investigated whether anticipatory processes in reaction-time procedures are governed by similar mechanisms of interval timing. We used a choice r...

In vivo biomechanical design using stadiometry and MRI to measure the height change due to (hyper)extension. Spine height is decreased under loads such as lifting, whole body vibration and sitting. Extension including increased lumbar lordosis reduces the load on the spine. The aim was to assess the effects of a supine hyperextended posture as a me...