Humans can effortlessly recognize others' actions in the presence of complex
transformations, such as changes in viewpoint. Several studies have located the
regions in the brain involved in invariant action recognition, however, the
underlying neural computations remain poorly understood. We use
magnetoencephalography (MEG) decoding and a dataset of well-controlled,
naturalistic videos of five actions (run, walk, jump, eat, drink) performed by
different actors at different viewpoints to study the computational steps used
to recognize actions across complex transformations. In particular, we ask when
the brain discounts changes in 3D viewpoint relative to when it initially
discriminates between actions. We measure the latency difference between
invariant and non-invariant action decoding when subjects view full videos as
well as form-depleted and motion-depleted stimuli. Our results show no
difference in decoding latency or temporal profile between invariant and
non-invariant action recognition in full videos. However, when either form or
motion information is removed from the stimulus set, we observe a decrease and
delay in invariant action decoding. Our results suggest that the brain
recognizes actions and builds invariance to complex transformations at the same
time, and that both form and motion information are crucial for fast, invariant
action recognition
