Neural Responses to Prior and Kinematic Information During Action Anticipation Vary with Expertise: fMRI Evidence from Activation and Connectivity

INTRODUCTION: Action anticipation depends on both prior information and incoming kinematic cues, yet how their neural effects vary as a function of motor expertise remains unclear. METHODS: We used fMRI to compare expert basketball players (n = 42) and non-athlete controls (n = 40) during a sport-specific anticipation task in which probabilistic prior cues preceded temporally occluded basketball shots. Priors were either absent or provided and, when provided, were congruent or incongruent with the subsequent outcome, enabling dissociation of prior availability and prior-kinematic congruency across cue and action observation stages. RESULTS: Behavioral results showed that athletes were more accurate overall, but expertise advantages were condition-specific. Group differences emerged when priors were absent or incongruent with the observed kinematics, whereas performance was comparable when priors were congruent. fMRI results showed that whole-brain and ROI analyses linked prior information and prior-kinematic conflict to distributed fronto-parietal regions implicated in action anticipation, with the left supplementary motor area (SMA) exhibiting reliable sensitivity to both prior availability and prior-kinematic congruency during action observation. Connectivity analyses further showed robust expertise-dependent effects that were not fully captured by regional activation alone. Athletes exhibited stronger SMA-centered coupling with posterior parietal and occipito-temporal regions, particularly under prior-kinematic conflict, along with broader enhancements in task-dependent connectivity among core nodes of the action observation network, whereas controls showed comparatively limited and more posteriorly focused connectivity effects. CONCLUSIONS: Together, these findings suggest that motor expertise is associated with network-level differences in how prior information and kinematic cues contribute to action anticipation, with SMA-centered coordination emerging as a prominent feature of these effects.