Coding of Self and Other’s Future Choices in Dorsal Premotor Cortex during Social Interaction

Rossella Cirillo,Lorenzo Ferrucci,Encarni Marcos,Stefano Ferraina,Aldo Genovesio

doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2018.07.030

Rossella Cirillo, Lorenzo Ferrucci + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2018.07.030

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Journal: Cell Reports	Publication Date: Aug 1, 2018
Citations: 17	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: Sapienza University of Rome

Abstract

Representing others' intentions is central to primate social life. We explored the role of dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) in discriminating between self and others' behavior while two male rhesus monkeys performed a non-match-to-goal task in a monkey-human paradigm. During each trial, two of four potential targets were randomly presented on the right and left parts of a screen, and the monkey or the human was required to choose the one that did not match the previously chosen target. Each agent had to monitor the other's action in order to select the correct target in that agent's own turn. We report neurons that selectively encoded the future choice of the monkey, the human agent, or both. Our findings suggest that PMd activity shows a high degree of self-other differentiation during face-to-face interactions, leading to an independent representation of what others will do instead of entailing self-centered mental rehearsal or mirror-like activities.

Highlights

Social life requires the ability to understand others’ behavior and predict others’ intentions
Previous reports have described neurons involved in various aspects of social understanding: ‘‘mirror’’ neurons in the ventral premotor cortex (PMv) respond to both performed and observed actions, neurons in anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex respond to others’ reward (Azzi et al, 2012; Chang et al, 2013), and neurons in medial frontal areas represent others’ actions or intentions (Yoshida et al, 2011, 2012; Falcone et al, 2017)
A previous study by Cisek and Kalaska (2004) reported that neurons in dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) might be involved in mental rehearsal of processes normally occurring before movement, interpreting this activity as a covert simulation process

Summary

Introduction

Social life requires the ability to understand others’ behavior and predict others’ intentions. Previous reports have described neurons involved in various aspects of social understanding: ‘‘mirror’’ neurons in the ventral premotor cortex (PMv) respond to both performed and observed actions (di Pellegrino et al, 1992; Rizzolatti et al, 1996), neurons in anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex respond to others’ reward (Azzi et al, 2012; Chang et al, 2013), and neurons in medial frontal areas represent others’ actions or intentions (Yoshida et al, 2011, 2012; Falcone et al, 2017). The authors showed that a large majority of neurons were directionally tuned in both performance and observation tasks (84%), and they proposed that the predictive activity of those cells was based on a mental rehearsal process These observations have led to the interpretation that the neural network responsible for planning and executing actions in PMd overlaps with the network for observation of others’ actions

Results

Discussion

Conclusion