Shared Mapping of Own and Others' Bodies in Visuotactile Bimodal Area of Monkey Parietal Cortex
Shared Mapping of Own and Others' Bodies in Visuotactile Bimodal Area of Monkey Parietal Cortex
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DOI：
10.1162/jocn.2009.21185
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发表时间：
2010-01-01
影响因子：
3.2
通讯作者：
Murata, Akira
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ishida, Hiroaki;Nakajima, Katsumi;Murata, Akira
顶叶皮层通过整合视觉和体感输入来促进身体表征。由于腹侧运动前皮层和顶叶皮层的镜像神经元在自我的内在运动表征上代表他人动作的视觉图像，这种匹配系统可能在识别他人的动作中起重要作用。然而，大脑在哪里以及如何表征他人的身体，以及如何将自己和他人的身体表征联系起来，目前还不清楚。我们预计，类人猿顶叶皮层的视觉神经元群不仅代表自己的身体部位，也代表其他身体部位。我们首先在猴子的腹侧顶内区和7b区寻找顶叶视觉活动双峰神经元，然后在猴子观察放置在实验者身体部位的视觉或触觉刺激时，检测这些神经元的活动。一些固定在猴子身体上的接受野（RFs）双峰神经元表现出与实验者相应身体部位相匹配的视觉反应，并且该身体部位附近的视觉RFs存在于距离体表约30 cm的周围空间。这些发现表明，大脑可以使用自我表征作为顶叶皮层感知他人身体部位的参考。这些神经元可能有助于在动作识别和模仿中自我和他人的身体之间的空间匹配。
Parietal cortex contributes to body representations by integrating visual and somatosensory inputs. Because mirror neurons in ventral premotor and parietal cortices represent visual images of others' actions on the intrinsic motor representation of the self, this matching system may play important roles in recognizing actions performed by others. However, where and how the brain represents others' bodies and correlates self and other body representations remain unclear. We expected that a population of visuotactile neurons in simian parietal cortex would represent not only own but others' body parts. We first searched for parietal visuotactile bimodal neurons in the ventral intraparietal area and area 7b of monkeys, and then examined the activity of these neurons while monkeys were observing visual or tactile stimuli placed on the experimenter's body parts. Some bimodal neurons with receptive fields (RFs) anchored on the monkey's body exhibited visual responses matched to corresponding body parts of the experimenter, and visual RFs near that body part existed in the peripersonal space within approximately 30 cm from the body surface. These findings suggest that the brain could use self representation as a reference for perception of others' body parts in parietal cortex. These neurons may contribute to spatial matching between the bodies of the self and others in both action recognition and imitation.