It is now well established that the human brain is endowed with a mechanism that pairs action perception with its execution. This system has been extensively studied using visual depictions of actions, however, there have been comparatively few attempts using auditory stimuli. In this study, we used a multideviant-mismatch negativity paradigm (MMN) incorporating action sounds (finger and tongue clicks) and acoustically-matched control counterparts to investigate action-related sound processing in a 12 year-old child with two 4-contact depth electrodes located in the anterior and posterior insular region and with an extensive gridcoverage of the frontal, temporal and parietal lobes of right hemisphere. Out of the 23 electrodes that presented an auditory response, 4 electrodes in the temporal and insular regions displayed significantly larger MMN responses for both action-related sounds. In addition, wavelet analysis carried out on electrodes located over the hand region revealed recruitment of the motor cortex for natural finger-click sound compared to control as indexed by a decrease in mu rhythms (12 and 20 Hz) power. These results constitute the first demonstration of the presence of an action-execution paring system sensitive to auditory stimuli in a child and bring further support to the hypothesis of motor resonance mechanism in the human developing brain.

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