RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Mirror Neurons of Ventral Premotor Cortex Are Modulated by Social Cues Provided by Others' Gaze
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 3145
OP 3156
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3220-15.2016
VO 36
IS 11
A1 Gino Coudé
A1 Fabrizia Festante
A1 Adriana Cilia
A1 Veronica Loiacono
A1 Marco Bimbi
A1 Leonardo Fogassi
A1 Pier Francesco Ferrari
YR 2016
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/11/3145.abstract
AB Mirror neurons (MNs) in the inferior parietal lobule and ventral premotor cortex (PMv) can code the intentions of other individuals using contextual cues. Gaze direction is an important social cue that can be used for understanding the meaning of actions made by other individuals. Here we addressed the issue of whether PMv MNs are influenced by the gaze direction of another individual. We recorded single-unit activity in macaque PMv while the monkey was observing an experimenter performing a grasping action and orienting his gaze either toward (congruent gaze condition) or away (incongruent gaze condition) from a target object. The results showed that one-half of the recorded MNs were modulated by the gaze direction of the human agent. These gaze-modulated neurons were evenly distributed between those preferring a gaze direction congruent with the direction where the grasping action was performed and the others that preferred an incongruent gaze. Whereas the presence of congruent responses is in line with the usual coupling of hand and gaze in both executed and observed actions, the incongruent responses can be explained by the long exposure of the monkeys to this condition. Our results reveal that the representation of observed actions in PMv is influenced by contextual information not only extracted from physical cues, but also from cues endowed with biological or social value.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT In this study, we present the first evidence showing that social cues modulate MNs in the monkey ventral premotor cortex. These data suggest that there is an integrated representation of other's hand actions and gaze direction at the single neuron level in the ventral premotor cortex, and support the hypothesis of a functional role of MNs in decoding actions and understanding motor intentions.