Fig. 5.

Simple comparisons of μ-suppression effects in alpha and beta bands. (A) Average power spectrum across central sensors for contrast of emotional–neutral in the coherent (left) and scrambled (right) conditions. Alpha and beta suppression effects are most strongly apparent in coherent PLDs, supporting the idea that this activity reflects action simulation rather than low-level visual properties. (B) Average power spectrum across central sensors for contrast of coherent–scrambled in the emotional (left) and neutral (right) PLD conditions. Whereas Emotional_Coherent stimuli are associated with alpha-band suppression between 9 and 12 Hz (solid black box, left), beta ‘suppression’ in the double subtraction reflects an enhancement of beta activity to Neutral_Coherent PLDs (dashed black box, right). (C) Scalp topographies of these effects display alpha-band suppression for Emotional_C–S over occipital and centroparietal sites (left) and beta-band enhancement for Neutral_C–S over frontocentral sites (right), matching the topography of the double subtraction in Figure 3.