Suzuki Wataru, Tani Toshiki, Banno Taku, Miyakawa Naohisa, Abe Hiroshi, Ichinohe Noritaka
aDepartment of Ultrastructural Research, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, National Institute of Neuroscience, Tokyo bIchinohe Neural System Group, Lab for Molecular Analysis of Higher Brain Function, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Saitama, Japan.
Neuroreport. 2015 Dec 16;26(18):1133-9. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0000000000000483.
Cortical areas in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) of primates have been recognized as a part of the 'social brain'. In particular, biological motion stimuli elicit neuronal responses in the STS, indicating their roles in the ability to understand others' actions. However, the spatial organization of functionally identified STS cells is not well understood because it is difficult to identify the precise locations of cells in sulcal regions. Here, using a small New World monkey, the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) that has a lissencephalic brain, we investigated the spatial organization of the cells responsive to other's actions in STS. The neural responses to movies showing several types of other's actions were recorded with multicontact linear-array electrodes that had four shanks (0.4 mm spacing), with eight electrode contacts (0.2 mm spacing) for each shank. The four shanks were penetrated perpendicular to the cortical surface. We found that STS cells significantly responded to other's goal-directed actions, such as when an actor marmoset was reaching for and grasping a piece of food. The response profiles to the movies were more similar between the vertically positioned electrodes than horizontally positioned electrodes when the distances between electrodes were matched. This indicates that there are functional columns in the higher-order visual areas in STS of the common marmoset.
灵长类动物颞上沟（STS）中的皮质区域被认为是“社会大脑”的一部分。特别是，生物运动刺激会在STS中引发神经元反应，这表明它们在理解他人行为的能力中发挥作用。然而，由于难以确定沟回区域中细胞的精确位置，功能鉴定的STS细胞的空间组织尚未得到很好的理解。在这里，我们使用一种具有平滑脑的新世界小型猴——普通狨猴（Callithrix jacchus），研究了STS中对他人行为有反应的细胞的空间组织。使用具有四个柄（间距0.4毫米）的多触点线性阵列电极记录对展示几种他人行为类型的电影的神经反应，每个柄有八个电极触点（间距0.2毫米）。四个柄垂直于皮质表面插入。我们发现，STS细胞对他人的目标导向行为有显著反应，例如当一只狨猴演员伸手去抓一块食物时。当电极之间的距离匹配时，垂直放置的电极之间对电影的反应模式比水平放置的电极之间更相似。这表明普通狨猴的STS高阶视觉区域中存在功能柱。
