relationship between activity in human primary motor cortex during action observation and the mirror neuron system活动之间的关系在人类初级运动皮层在行动观察和镜像神经元系统.pdfVIP

Relationship between Activity in Human Primary Motor Cortex during Action Observation and the Mirror Neuron System 1 1 1,2 James M. Kilner *, Jennifer L. Marchant , Chris D. Frith ˚ 1The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, London, London, United Kingdom, 2 Niels Bohr Project ‘‘Interacting Minds’’, CFIN, University of Aarhus, Arhus, Denmark Abstract The attenuation of the beta cortical oscillations during action observation has been interpreted as evidence of a mirror neuron system (MNS) in humans. Here we investigated the modulation of beta cortical oscillations with the viewpoint of an observed action. We asked subjects to observe videos of an actor making a variety of arm movements. We show that when subjects were observing arm movements there was a significant modulation of beta oscillations overlying left and right sensorimotor cortices. This pattern of attenuation was driven by the side of the screen on which the observed movement occurred and not by the hand that was observed moving. These results are discussed in terms of the firing patterns of mirror neurons in F5 which have been reported to have similar properties. Citation: Kilner JM, Marchant JL, Frith CD (2009) Relationship between Activity in Human Primary Motor Cortex during Action Observation and the Mirror Neuron System. PLoS ONE 4(3): e4925. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004925 Editor: Bernhard Baune, James Cook University, Australia Received October 2, 2008; Accepted February 18, 2009; Published March 17, 2009 Copyright: 2009 Kilner et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of