M1 Corticospinal Mirror Neurons and Their Role in Movement Suppression during Action Observation

Vigneswaran, Ganesh; Philipp, Roland; Lemon, Roger; Kraskov, Alexander

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.12.006

Cited by 191 publications

(227 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…In non-human primates, activity of mirror neurons have been found in different regions of the motor system (Lemon, 2010), and mirror neurons have been identified in the ventral premotor cortex (see review by Kilner and Lemon, 2013), primary motor cortex (Vigneswaran et al , 2013), inferior parietal lobule (Casile, 2013), and ventral and lateral intraparietal areas. In contrast the existence of a MNS in humans, has been surmised almost entirely by functional MRI (fMRI) and Mu rhythm in the EEG a measure of a resting motor state, which is normally suppressed by input from an action observation or movement execution.…”

Section: Cerebral Localisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It remains to be confirmed that suppression mirror neurons are present in humans (Mukamel et al, 2010), but there are daily occasions when one wants to covertly imitate an observed action, allowing the observer to watch the actor, while using their own motor system to identify and categorize the observed movement, without the activation overflowing into selfmovement (Vigneswaran et al , 2013).…”

Section: Als Hand Function and Mirror Neuronsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does dysfunction of the mirror neuron system contribute to symptoms in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?

Eisen

Lemon

Kiernan

et al. 2015

Clinical Neurophysiology

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Eisen et al, Mirror Neurons in ALS 2 Declaration of interest:The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. Eisen et al, Mirror Neurons in ALS 3 Abbreviations:ALS: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; ADM: adductor digiti minimi; APB: abductor pollicic brevis; bvFTD: Behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia; FTD: Frontotemporal dementia; fMRI: functional MRI; MNS: Mirror neuron system; M1: Primary motor cortex; PTNs: Pyramidal tract neurons; vMPFC: Ventral medial prefrontal cortex. Eisen et al, Mirror Neurons in ALS 4 AbstractThere is growing evidence that mirror neurons, initially discovered over two decades ago in the monkey, are present in the human brain. In the monkey, mirror neurons characteristically fire not only when it is performing an action, such as grasping an object, but also when observing a similar action performed by another agent (human or monkey). In this review we discuss the origin, cortical distribution and possible functions of mirror neurons as a background to exploring their potential relevance in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). We have recently proposed that ALS (and the related condition of frontotemporal dementia) may be viewed as a failure of interlinked functional complexes having their origins in key evolutionary adaptations. The mirror neuron system is considered by many to be the basis of primates' social cognition, with a clear evolutionary advantage. Impaired empathy and motor control has been related to a defective mirror neuron system. In ALS, the mirror neuron system might be implicated in empathy, the split-hand syndrome, gait, speech, and related languagegesture impairments.Eisen et al, Mirror Neurons in ALS 5

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Section: Cerebral Localisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Als Hand Function and Mirror Neuronsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does dysfunction of the mirror neuron system contribute to symptoms in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?

Eisen

Lemon

Kiernan

et al. 2015

Clinical Neurophysiology

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“…The authors suggested that this PTN suppression might be involved in the inhibition of the observer's movement during action observation. In a following study, they applied the same paradigm to PTNs recorded from primary motor cortex (F1) [36]. About half of these neurons were modulated during action observation.…”

Section: New Findings On Visual Properties Of Mirror Neurons (A) Mirrmentioning

confidence: 99%

The mirror mechanism: recent findings and perspectives

Rizzolatti

Fogassi

2014

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

238

148

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Mirror neurons are a specific type of visuomotor neuron that discharge both when a monkey executes a motor act and when it observes a similar motor act performed by another individual. In this article, we review first the basic properties of these neurons. We then describe visual features recently investigated which indicate that, besides encoding the goal of motor acts, mirror neurons are modulated by location in space of the observed motor acts, by the perspective from which the others’ motor acts are seen, and by the value associated with the object on which others’ motor acts are performed. In the last part of this article, we discuss the role of the mirror mechanism in planning actions and in understanding the intention underlying the others’ motor acts. We also review some human studies suggesting that motor intention in humans may rely, as in the monkey, on the mirror mechanism.

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“…Thus, unlike actual performance, the observation of the second, reversed, sequence did not interfere with the expression of the delayed gains for the initially trained sequence. The extent of overlap in brain regions engaged during actual performance and in action observation is not clear (Hari et al 1998;Strafella and Paus 2000;Buccino et al 2001;Grèzes and Decety 2001;Rizzolatti and Craighero 2004;Cross et al 2009); some brain areas, specifically, the primary motor cortex (M1) were found to be activated more intensely (Caetano et al 2007;Gazzola and Keysers 2009;Vigneswaran et al 2013) or even exclusively (Frey and Gerry 2006;Cross et al 2009) during actual practice. This is of importance because M1 is a key area for movement sequence skill memory (Karni et al 1995(Karni et al , 1998Hikosaka et al 2002;Gabitov et al 2014).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Not quite there: skill consolidation in training by doing or observing

2016

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We tested the notion that action observation engages learning processes and mnemonic representations overlapping with those engaged in actual performance. An identical number of training instances, actual performance, or observation, was afforded on a finger opposition sequence task. Both training modes resulted in immediate gains in performance, as well as in robust delayed, "off-line," gains, indicating post-training consolidation. However, the expression of delayed gains could be blocked by the subsequent performance of a second sequence (post-training interference), but not by its observation. The mnemonic representations of "how-to" knowledge acquired from actual or observed movement may not overlap.[Supplemental material is available for this article.]The observation of action can lead to subsequent specific performance gains, presumably facilitating learning processes (Heyes and Foster 2002;Brown et al. 2003;Torriero et al. 2007;Hayes et al. 2010;Zhang et al. 2011). It is not clear, however, to what degree the beneficial effects of observation reflect a direct recruitment of the motor network involved in actual movement execution; specifically, whether the recruitment of the motor network through putative systems such as the "mirror neuron system," or an "action observation network" (AON) overlaps with the recruitment of the motor network in actual performance (Hari et al. 1998;Buccino et al. 2001;Calvo-Merino et al. 2006;Gazzola and Keysers 2009;Mukamel et al. 2010).This is a pertinent question given that there is increasing evidence that taskspecific changes in the motor cortex constitute an important part of the mnemonic representation of well-trained movement sequences (Karni et al. 1998;Yang et al. 2009Yang et al. , 2014Xu et al. 2010;Gabitov et al. 2014) and that along Hebbian lines, neurons involved in task execution are an integral part of the subsequent mnemonic representation. The AON presumably matches the perceived action with a neural representation within the motor repertoire of the observer. There is evidence, nevertheless, for performance gains even in observing new motor tasks, for which no representation is available in the observer's repertoire (Mattar and Gribble 2005;Stefan et al. 2005;Gatti et al. 2013).The aim of Experiment 1 was to compare the training-related performance gains in two training modes: actual training (Act) and training by observation (Obs) given equal practice on a five-element sequence of opposition movements ( Fig. 2A). Skill acquisition in different brain systems (modalities) is characterized by a distinct time-course (phases) (Karni and Sagi 1991, 1993;Karni 1996;Ari-Even Roth et al. 2005) presumably reflecting a similar repertoire of basic mechanism of plasticity and procedural memory consolidation processes (Karni and Bertini 1997;Dudai 2004;Robertson et al. 2004). Thus, a reasonable expectation would be that the acquisition of motor skills by observation would show phases of learning similar to those known to characterize learning when physical motor training...

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M1 Corticospinal Mirror Neurons and Their Role in Movement Suppression during Action Observation

Cited by 191 publications

References 39 publications

Does dysfunction of the mirror neuron system contribute to symptoms in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?

Does dysfunction of the mirror neuron system contribute to symptoms in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?

The mirror mechanism: recent findings and perspectives

Not quite there: skill consolidation in training by doing or observing

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