Journal
CEREBRAL CORTEX
Volume 29, Issue 10, Pages 4223-4237Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhy304
Keywords
action execution; action observation; dorsal premotor cortex; mirror neurons
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Funding
- GSRT [GSRT 14TUR OBSERVENEMO]
- European Regional Development Fund
- University of Crete [3704, 3767]
- John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation
- project Advanced Research Activities in Biomedical and Agroalimentary Technologies - Operational Programme Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation (NSRF 2014-2020) [MIS 5002469]
- European Union (European Regional Development Fund)
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We identified neurons in dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) of the macaque brain that respond during execution and observation of reaching-to-grasp actions, thus fulfilling the mirror neuron (MirN) criterion. During observation, the percentage of grip-selective MirNs in PMd and area F5 were comparable, and the selectivity indices in the two areas were similar. During execution, F5-MirNs were more selective than PMd-MirNs for grip, which was reflected in the higher selectivity indices in F5 than in PMd. PMd displayed grip-related information earlier than F5 during both conditions. In both areas, the number of neurons exhibiting congruent visual and motor selectivity did not differ from that expected by chance. However, both the PMd and F5 neuronal ensembles provided observation-execution matching, suggesting that the congruency may be achieved in a distributed fashion across the selective elements of the population. Furthermore, representational similarity analysis revealed that grip encoding in PMd and F5 is alike during both observation and execution. Our study provides direct evidence of mirror activity in PMd during observation of forelimb movements, and suggests that PMd is a node of the MirN circuit.
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