Mirrors in action: investigating the functional organization of the rhesus monkey motor and mirror system using fMRI

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 project, we investigated if mirror responses in the monkey brain also extend beyond the well studied grasping motor system, as suggested by vicarious responses found in the human somatosensory and emotional systems using non-invasive imaging and electrophysiological techniques (Pihko et al., 2010; Keysers et al., 2004; Chan and Baker, 2015). In addition, we investigated if state-of-the-art analysis techniques based upon non-invasive imaging, like fMRI repetition suppression, allow valid inferences about the presence or absence of mirror neurons in certain brain regions.

Publication year:2019