Functional Properties of Parietal Hand Manipulation–related Neurons and Mirror Neurons Responding to Vision of Own Hand Action

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 560-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazutaka Maeda ◽  
Hiroaki Ishida ◽  
Katsumi Nakajima ◽  
Masahiko Inase ◽  
Akira Murata
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Visual Feedback ◽  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
Target Object ◽  
Lateral View ◽  
Inferior Parietal Lobule ◽  
Visual Responses ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Parietal Lobule ◽  
Hand Action

Parietofrontal pathways play an important role in visually guided motor control. In this pathway, hand manipulation-related neurons in the inferior parietal lobule represent 3-D properties of an object and motor patterns to grasp it. Furthermore, mirror neurons show visual responses that are concerned with the actions of others and motor-related activity during execution of the same grasping action. Because both of these categories of neurons integrate visual and motor signals, these neurons may play a role in motor control based on visual feedback signals. The aim of this study was to investigate whether these neurons in inferior parietal lobule including the anterior intraparietal area and PFG of macaques represent visual images of the monkey's own hand during a self-generated grasping action. We recorded 235 neurons related to hand manipulation tasks. Of these, 54 responded to video clips of the monkey's own hand action, the same as visual feedback during that action or clips of the experimenter's hand action in a lateral view. Of these 54 neurons, 25 responded to video clips of the monkey's own hand, even without an image of the target object. We designated these 25 neurons as “hand-type.” Thirty-three of 54 neurons that were defined as mirror neurons showed visual responses to the experimenter's action and motor responses. Thirteen of these mirror neurons were classified as hand-type. These results suggest that activity of hand manipulation-related and mirror neurons in anterior intraparietal/PFG plays a fundamental role in monitoring one's own body state based on visual feedback.

scholarly journals The role of the inferior parietal lobule in writer’s cramp

Brain ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 143 (6) ◽  
pp. 1766-1779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shabbir Hussain I Merchant ◽  
Eleni Frangos ◽  
Jacob Parker ◽  
Megan Bradson ◽  
Tianxia Wu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Healthy Volunteers ◽  
Silent Period ◽  
Fine Motor ◽  
Inferior Parietal Lobule ◽  
Fine Motor Control ◽  
Writer’S Cramp ◽  
Writer's Cramp ◽  
Parietal Lobule

Abstract Humans have a distinguishing ability for fine motor control that is subserved by a highly evolved cortico-motor neuronal network. The acquisition of a particular motor skill involves a long series of practice movements, trial and error, adjustment and refinement. At the cortical level, this acquisition begins in the parieto-temporal sensory regions and is subsequently consolidated and stratified in the premotor-motor cortex. Task-specific dystonia can be viewed as a corruption or loss of motor control confined to a single motor skill. Using a multimodal experimental approach combining neuroimaging and non-invasive brain stimulation, we explored interactions between the principal nodes of the fine motor control network in patients with writer’s cramp and healthy matched controls. Patients and healthy volunteers underwent clinical assessment, diffusion-weighted MRI for tractography, and functional MRI during a finger tapping task. Activation maps from the task-functional MRI scans were used for target selection and neuro-navigation of the transcranial magnetic stimulation. Single- and double-pulse TMS evaluation included measurement of the input-output recruitment curve, cortical silent period, and amplitude of the motor evoked potentials conditioned by cortico-cortical interactions between premotor ventral (PMv)-motor cortex (M1), anterior inferior parietal lobule (aIPL)-M1, and dorsal inferior parietal lobule (dIPL)-M1 before and after inducing a long term depression-like plastic change to dIPL node with continuous theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation in a randomized, sham-controlled design. Baseline dIPL-M1 and aIPL-M1 cortico-cortical interactions were facilitatory and inhibitory, respectively, in healthy volunteers, whereas the interactions were converse and significantly different in writer’s cramp. Baseline PMv-M1 interactions were inhibitory and similar between the groups. The dIPL-PMv resting state functional connectivity was increased in patients compared to controls, but no differences in structural connectivity between the nodes were observed. Cortical silent period was significantly prolonged in writer’s cramp. Making a long term depression-like plastic change to dIPL node transformed the aIPL-M1 interaction to inhibitory (similar to healthy volunteers) and cancelled the PMv-M1 inhibition only in the writer’s cramp group. These findings suggest that the parietal multimodal sensory association region could have an aberrant downstream influence on the fine motor control network in writer’s cramp, which could be artificially restored to its normal function.

The Extended Mirror Neuron Network

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Bonini
Keyword(s):  
Basal Ganglia ◽  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Mirror Neuron ◽  
Inferior Parietal Lobule ◽  
Neuron Network ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
Parietal Lobule ◽  
Subcortical Regions

Mirror neurons (MNs) are a fascinating class of cells originally discovered in the ventral premotor cortex (PMv) and, subsequently, in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) of the macaque, which become active during both the execution and observation of actions. In this review, I will first highlight the mounting evidence indicating that mirroring others’ actions engages a broad system of reciprocally connected cortical areas, which extends well beyond the classical IPL-PMv circuit and might even include subcortical regions such as the basal ganglia. Then, I will present the most recent findings supporting the idea that the observation of one’s own actions, which might play a role in the ontogenetic origin and tuning of MNs, retains a particular relevance within the adult MN system. Finally, I will propose that both cortical and subcortical mechanisms do exist to decouple MN activity from the motor output, in order to render it exploitable for high-order perceptual, cognitive, and even social functions. The findings reviewed here provide an original framework for envisaging the main challenges and experimental directions of future neurophysiological and neuroanatomical studies of the monkey MN system.

Coding Observed Motor Acts: Different Organizational Principles in the Parietal and Premotor Cortex of Humans

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Jastorff ◽  
Chiara Begliomini ◽  
Maddalena Fabbri-Destro ◽  
Giacomo Rizzolatti ◽  
Guy A. Orban
Keyword(s):  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Inferior Parietal Lobule ◽  
Ventral Part ◽  
Social Ability ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Parietal Lobule ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Organizational Principles ◽  
Motor Acts

Understanding actions of conspecifics is a fundamental social ability depending largely on the activation of a parieto-frontal network. Using functional MRI (fMRI), we studied how goal-directed movements (i.e., motor acts) performed by others are coded within this network. In the first experiment, we presented volunteers with video clips showing four different motor acts (dragging, dropping, grasping, and pushing) performed with different effectors (foot, hand, and mouth). We found that the coding of observed motor acts differed between premotor and parietal cortex. In the premotor cortex, they clustered according to the effector used, and in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL), they clustered according to the type of the observed motor act, regardless of the effector. Two subsequent experiments in which we directly contrasted these four motor acts indicated that, in IPL, the observed motor acts are coded according to the relationship between agent and object: Movements bringing the object toward the agent (grasping and dragging) activate a site corresponding approximately to the ventral part of the putative human AIP (phAIP), whereas movements moving the object away from the agent (pushing and dropping) are clustered dorsally within this area. These data provide indications that the phAIP region plays a role in categorizing motor acts according to their behavioral significance. In addition, our results suggest that in the case of motor acts typically done with the hand, the representations of such acts in phAIP are used as templates for coding motor acts executed with other effectors.

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