Abstract: Perceiving animacy from moving entities is vital to human survival, reproduction, and social interaction. Motion cues that trigger animacy perception can be divided into two types: movements with biological motion patterns and movements conveying intention, both of which contain some specific motion features that are key to animacy perception. The existing theoretical hypotheses explain the above phenomena from the perspectives of visual information processing and social cognition, respectively. Animacy perception from the two types of motion cues engages multiple cortical and sub-cortical brain regions, which may constitute a brain network serving the purpose of life-signal detection as well as high-level functions like intention understanding and reasoning. Future studies need to systematically reveal the distinct roles of the two types of motion cues in animacy perception and their interactive mechanisms from cognitive, behavioral genetic, and neural aspects. Meanwhile, the organization and connection of the brain network for animacy perception and the exact function of each individual node in this network remain to be illuminated. In addition, exploring the computational principle of animacy perception from motion cues and treating the deficits in such ability as a potential marker of social cognitive disorders would help promote its application in the fields of artificial intelligence and mental disorder diagnosis. 

从运动的客体中感知生命性对于人类的生存繁衍和社会互动具有重要意义。传达生命性的动态线索 可分为具有生物运动模式和表现意图的运动两类, 二者所包含的一些特定运动特征是其引发生命性知觉的关 键。现有理论假说分别从视觉信息加工和社会认知的角度解释了上述现象的认知机制。基于两类动态线索的 生命性感知与皮层下和皮层上多个脑区的活动有关, 这些脑区可能构成了一个涉及基本的生命信号探测以及 高级的意图理解和推理功能的脑网络。未来研究需从认知、行为遗传及神经等层面系统揭示两类动态线索在 生命性知觉中的作用及其交互机制, 阐明上述脑网络的组织和连接方式及各个节点的具体功能; 同时探究基 于动态线索感知生命性的计算原理及将生命性感知异常作为社会认知障碍标志物的可能性, 以推动其在人工 智能与心理疾患识别等领域的应用。

国家自然科学基金(32171059, 31830037)、中国科技部 科技创新 2030-重大项目(2021ZD0203800)、中国科学 院战略性先导科技专项课题(XDB32010300)、中国科 学院青年交叉团队(JCTD-2021-06)、中国科学院青年 创新促进会、中国科学院心理研究所自主部署项目(E2CX4325CX)以及中央高校基础研究基金资助。