title: Mirror Neurons of Ventral Premotor Cortex Are Modulated by Social Cues Provided by Others' Gaze.
abstract: 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.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  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.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, 43100 Parma, Italy gino.coude@nemo.unipr.it.
authors.forename: Gino
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Coudé
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, 43100 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Fabrizia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Festante
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, 43100 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Adriana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cilia
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, 43100 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Veronica
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Loiacono
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, 43100 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7541-3710
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bimbi
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, 43100 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Leonardo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fogassi
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, 43100 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Pier Francesco
authors.initials: PF
authors.lastname: Ferrari
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality; D018737:Hand Strength; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D059167:Mirror Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000166:cytology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012938:Social Perception
keywords: gaze; grasping; mirror neuron; premotor cortex; social cues