Neural encoding of visual action stimuli in mirror neurons in monkey premotor area

在执行动作和观察动作时，前额叶皮层的镜像神经元处于活跃状态。这些神经元对视觉呈现的动作刺激表现出有趣的调节特性，这些动作刺激结合了对运动效应器细节的选择性、目标物体的信息以及效应器和物体的空间关系。然而，运动前皮层F5区对动作刺激的视觉处理的精确神经和计算机制在很大程度上仍然未知。这个项目是建立在先前一个关于F5镜像神经元视觉特性的项目的结果之上的。通过将电生理实验与计算机图形学和神经建模的最新方法相结合，我们希望进一步了解F5区域中与动作相关的视觉信息的处理。具体来说，我们打算研究F5区域的镜像神经元如何编码动作的空间和时间信息，以及动态视觉和运动表征如何在单个细胞水平上相互作用。这些实验可能解开镜像神经元系统计算理论的新限制。

Mirror neurons in prefrontal cortex are active during the execution of actions and during action observation. Such neurons show interesting tuning properties for visually presented action stimuli that combine selectivity for details of the moving effector with information about the goal object and the spatial relationship of effector and object. Yet, the precise neural and computational mechanisms underlying the visual processing of action stimuli in area F5 of the premotor cortex remain largely unknown. The proposed project builds on previous results obtained in a project on the visual properties of F5 mirror neurons. By combining electrophysiological experiments with state-of-the-art methods from computer graphics and neural modelling we want to further the understanding of the processing of action-related visual information in area F5. Specifically, we intend to investigate how spatial and temporal information about actions is encoded by mirror neurons in area F5 and how dynamic visual and motor representations interact at the level of single cells. These experiments may unravel new constraints for computational theories on the mirror neuron system.