title: Ventral premotor neurons encoding representations of action during self and others' inaction.
abstract: Our environment offers us a number of opportunities for action. However, sometimes we also have to refrain from acting, for example, when facing a "do not touch" sign placed over a desirable object on the shelf of a shop. Previous findings emphasized the role of mesial frontal and prefrontal regions in the inhibition of stimulus-driven motor responses [1-3], leading to the prediction that motor areas should not become active when one inhibits a motor response. Nevertheless, refraining from performing a specific action might require one to internally represent what one is not doing. Is the motor system simply inhibited in this condition, or does it play an active role in the representation of the withheld action? Here, we show that while the majority of macaque ventral premotor neurons remain silent when the monkey refrains from grasping an object, others, recorded simultaneously with the former, discharge both when the monkey grasps an object ("action") and when it refrains from doing so ("inaction"). The same effect has been shown to be present for mirror neurons [4]. Some of them, besides discharging during action observation, also fire when the observed agent refrains from acting. Notably, neurons discharging during inaction specifically encode either the monkey's own or other's inaction, not both. Our findings indicate that ventral premotor cortex encodes representations of our own or others' action not only when we perform or observe that action but also when its negation is represented.
authors.affiliation: Italian Institute of Technology, Brain Center for Social and Motor Cognition, University of Parma, Via Volturno 39, 43125 Parma, Italy. Electronic address: luca.bonini@unipr.it.
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bonini
authors.affiliation: Italian Institute of Technology, Brain Center for Social and Motor Cognition, University of Parma, Via Volturno 39, 43125 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Maranesi
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Via Volturno 39, 43125 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Livi
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Via Volturno 39, 43125 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Leonardo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fogassi
authors.affiliation: Italian Institute of Technology, Brain Center for Social and Motor Cognition, University of Parma, Via Volturno 39, 43125 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Giacomo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rizzolatti
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D058256:Brain Waves; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D008251:Macaca; D009046:Motor Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*