Neurons in higher cortical areas appear to become active during action observation, either by mirroring observed actions (termed mirror neurons) or by eliciting mental rehearsal of observed motor acts. We report the existence of neurons in primary motor cortex (MI) responding to viewed actions, an area generally considered to initiate and guide movement performance. Multielectrode recordings in monkeys performing or observing a well-learned step tracking task showed that approximately half of MI neurons, active when monkeys performed the task, were also active when they observed the action being performed by a human. These ‘view’ neurons were spatially intermingled with ‘do’ neurons, active only during movement performance. Simultaneously recorded, ‘view’ neurons comprised two groups: ∼38% retained the same preferred direction (PD) and timing during performance and viewing, while the remainder (62%) changed their PDs and time lag during viewing compared with performance. Nevertheless, population activity during viewing was sufficient to predict the direction and trajectory of viewed movements as action unfolded, although less accurately than during performance. ‘View’ neurons became less active and contained poorer representations of action when viewing only sub-components of the task. MI ‘view’ neurons thus appear to reflect the aspects of a learned movement when observed in others and form part of a broadly engaged set of cortical areas routinely responding to learned behaviors. These findings suggest that viewing a learned action elicits replay of aspects of MI activity needed to perform the observed action and could additionally reflect processing related to understanding, learning or mentally rehearsing action.
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