Neural bases for observed and executed actions in the primate brain

One of the most intriguing stories to emerge in cognitive neurosciences over the past few decades has been the discovery of the mirror neurons in the monkey brain. These neurons respond not only when a monkey performs a particular motor act, but also when it observes another individual performing a similar motor act. A similar mirror system appears to exist in the human brain as well, and it has been speculated that this system mediates a whole scale of social capabilities, including action and intention understanding, imitation, language abilities and empathy. However, more than 20 years after the initial discovery of these neurons, the organization and precise function of the primate mirror system has not been unraveled.In this PhD project, we will, for the first time, investigate the organization of the mirror system at systems level in both species in a comparative fMRI study. Using fMRI, we will first establish a fine-grained characterization of different computational functions related to action observation and execution in the human and monkey brain, and compare this information obtained in both species to investigate functional homologies and build plausible computational models of action recognition. Furthermore, we will investigate if state-of-the-art multi-voxel pattern analysis techniques can infer the existence or absence of mirror neurons in the brain by employing this technique on non-human primate fMRI data, which allows in depth comparison with single neuron information obtained from invasive recording techniques in the same model.

Publication year:2020