RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Two-Dimensional Representation of Action and Arm-Use Sequences in the Presupplementary and Supplementary Motor Areas
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 15533
OP 15544
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0855-13.2013
VO 33
IS 39
A1 Nakajima, Toshi
A1 Hosaka, Ryosuke
A1 Tsuda, Ichiro
A1 Tanji, Jun
A1 Mushiake, Hajime
YR 2013
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/39/15533.abstract
AB The medial frontal cortex has been thought to be crucially involved in temporal structuring of behavior in monkeys and humans. We examined neuronal activity in the supplementary and presupplementary motor areas of monkeys to investigate how the nervous system deals with the coding of 16 motor sequences resulting from multiple actions involving bilateral use of the arms. We first found in both areas that this behavioral demand resulted in attribute-based representation of individual motor acts, reflecting functional (action) or anatomical (right/left arm) attributes. Actions were frequently represented according to a body-axis-centered reference frame (supination or pronation) regardless of the arm to be used. Moreover, behavioral sequences were primarily represented with respect to the action- or arm-use sequence rather than the sequence of individual movements. We propose that the two-dimensional attribute-based sequence representation provides a robust and efficient means of processing multiple behavioral sequences.