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Relationship between activity in human primary motor cortex during action observation and the mirror neuron system

Kilner, J.M.; Marchant, J.L.; Frith, C.D.; Baune, B.; (2009) Relationship between activity in human primary motor cortex during action observation and the mirror neuron system. PLoS ONE , 4 (3) , Article e4925. 10.1371/journal.pone.0004925. Green open access

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Abstract

The attenuation of the beta cortical oscillations during action observation has been interpreted as evidence of a mirror neuron system (MNS) in humans. Here we investigated the modulation of beta cortical oscillations with the viewpoint of an observed action. We asked subjects to observe videos of an actor making a variety of arm movements. We show that when subjects were observing arm movements there was a significant modulation of beta oscillations overlying left and right sensorimotor cortices. This pattern of attenuation was driven by the side of the screen on which the observed movement occurred and not by the hand that was observed moving. These results are discussed in terms of the firing patterns of mirror neurons in F5 which have been reported to have similar properties.

Type: Article
Title: Relationship between activity in human primary motor cortex during action observation and the mirror neuron system
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004925
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0004925
Language: English
Additional information: © 2009 Kilner et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/20126
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