title: Action observation activates neurons of the monkey ventrolateral prefrontal cortex.
abstract: Prefrontal cortex is crucial for exploiting contextual information for the planning and guidance of behavioral responses. Among contextual cues, those provided by others' behavior are particularly important, in primates, for selecting appropriate reactions and suppressing the inappropriate ones. These latter functions deeply rely on the ability to understand others' actions. However, it is largely unknown whether prefrontal neurons are activated by action observation. To address this issue, we recorded the activity of ventrolateral prefrontal (VLPF) neurons of macaque monkeys during the observation of videos depicting biological movements performed by a monkey or a human agent, and object motion. Our results show that a population of VLPF neurons respond to the observation of biological movements, in particular those representing goal directed actions. Many of these neurons also show a preference for the agent performing the action. The neural response is present also when part of the observed movement is obscured, suggesting that these VLPF neurons code a high order representation of the observed action rather than a simple visual description of it.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, via Volturno 39, 43125 Parma, Italy.|Dipartimento di Scienze biomediche e chirurgico specialistiche, Università di Ferrara, via Fossato di Mortara 64/A 44121, Ferrara, Italy.
authors.forename: Luciano
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Simone
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, via Volturno 39, 43125 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bimbi
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, via Volturno 39, 43125 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rodà
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: Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, via Volturno 39, 43125 Parma, Italy.
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rozzi
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D018737:Hand Strength / Q000502:physiology; D008253:Macaca mulatta / Q000502:physiology*; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*