Maranesi Monica, Livi Alessandro, Bonini Luca
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Brain Center for Social and Motor Cognition, 43125 Parma, Italy, and
Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, 43125 Parma, Italy.
J Neurosci. 2015 Aug 26;35(34):11824-9. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0301-15.2015.
Mirror neurons (MNs) discharge during action execution as well as during observation of others' actions. Our own actions are those that we have the opportunity to observe more frequently, but no study thus far to our knowledge has addressed the issue of whether, and to what extent, MNs can code own hand visual feedback (HVF) during object grasping. Here, we show that MNs of the ventral premotor area F5 of macaque monkeys are particularly sensitive to HVF relative to non-MNs simultaneously recorded in the same penetrations. Importantly, the HVF effect is more evident on MN activity during hand-object interaction than during the hand-shaping phase. Furthermore, the increase of MN activity induced by HVF and others' actions observed from a subjective perspective were positively correlated. These findings indicate that at least part of ventral premotor MNs can process the visual information coming from own hand interacting with objects, likely playing a role in self-action monitoring.
We show that mirror neurons (MNs) of area F5 of the macaque, in addition to encoding others' observed actions, are particularly sensitive, relative to simultaneously recorded non-MNs, to the sight of the monkey's own hand during object grasping, likely playing a role in self-action monitoring.
镜像神经元（MNs）在动作执行以及观察他人动作时都会放电。我们自己的动作是我们有机会更频繁观察到的动作，但据我们所知，目前尚无研究探讨MNs在物体抓握过程中是否以及在多大程度上能够编码自身手部视觉反馈（HVF）这一问题。在这里，我们表明，相对于在同一电极穿刺中同时记录的非MNs，猕猴腹侧运动前区F5的MNs对HVF特别敏感。重要的是，与手部塑形阶段相比，手部与物体相互作用期间，HVF对MN活动的影响更为明显。此外，HVF引起的MN活动增加与从主观角度观察到的他人动作引起的MN活动增加呈正相关。这些发现表明，至少部分腹侧运动前MNs能够处理来自自身手部与物体相互作用的视觉信息，可能在自我动作监测中发挥作用。
我们表明，猕猴F5区的镜像神经元（MNs）除了编码观察到的他人动作外，相对于同时记录的非MNs，在物体抓握过程中对猴子自身手部的视觉特别敏感，可能在自我动作监测中发挥作用。
