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Mirror neuron

Manuela D Mitsogiannis, Graham E Little, Kevin J Mitchell
BACKGROUND: Sensory processing relies on projections from the thalamus to the neocortex being established during development. Information from different sensory modalities reaching the thalamus is segregated into specialized nuclei, whose neurons then send inputs to cognate cortical areas through topographically defined axonal connections. Developing thalamocortical axons (TCAs) normally approach the cortex by extending through the subpallium; here, axonal navigation is aided by distributed guidance cues and discrete cell populations, such as the corridor neurons and the internal capsule (IC) guidepost cells...
April 24, 2017: Neural Development
Pier Francesco Ferrari, Anna Barbot, Bernardo Bianchi, Andrea Ferri, Gioacchino Garofalo, Nicola Bruno, Gino Coudé, Chiara Bertolini, Martina Ardizzi, Ylenia Nicolini, Mauro Belluardo, Elisa De Stefani
Studies of the last twenty years on the motor and premotor cortices of primates demonstrated that the motor system is involved in the control and initiation of movements, and in higher cognitive processes, such as action understanding, imitation, and empathy. Mirror neurons are only one example of such theoretical shift. Their properties demonstrate that motor and sensory processing are coupled in the brain. Such knowledge has been also central for designing new neurorehabilitative therapies for patients suffering from brain injuries and consequent motor deficits...
May 2017: Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
Jui-Yi Hsieh, Scott C Baraban
Medial ganglionic eminence (MGE) transplantation rescues disease phenotypes in various preclinical models with interneuron deficiency or dysfunction, including epilepsy. While underlying mechanism(s) remains unclear to date, a simple explanation is that appropriate synaptic integration of MGE-derived interneurons elevates GABA-mediated inhibition and modifies the firing activity of excitatory neurons in the host brain. However, given the complexity of interneurons and potential for transplant-derived interneurons to integrate or alter the host network in unexpected ways, it remains unexplored whether synaptic connections formed by transplant-derived interneurons safely mirror those associated with endogenous interneurons...
March 2017: ENeuro
Rachael Lumb, Sam Buckberry, Genevieve Secker, David Lawrence, Quenten Schwarz
BACKGROUND: Cranial neural crest cells (NCCs) are a unique embryonic cell type which give rise to a diverse array of derivatives extending from neurons and glia through to bone and cartilage. Depending on their point of origin along the antero-posterior axis cranial NCCs are rapidly sorted into distinct migratory streams that give rise to axial specific structures. These migratory streams mirror the underlying segmentation of the brain with NCCs exiting the diencephalon and midbrain following distinct paths compared to those exiting the hindbrain rhombomeres (r)...
April 13, 2017: BMC Developmental Biology
Yoshifumi Abe, Tomokazu Tsurugizawa, Denis Le Bihan
April 2017: PLoS Biology
Hannah M Hobson, Dorothy V M Bishop
Mu suppression studies have been widely used to infer the activity of the human mirror neuron system (MNS) in a number of processes, ranging from action understanding, language, empathy and the development of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Although mu suppression is enjoying a resurgence of interest, it has a long history. This review aimed to revisit mu's past, and examine its recent use to investigate MNS involvement in language, social processes and ASDs. Mu suppression studies have largely failed to produce robust evidence for the role of the MNS in these domains...
March 2017: Royal Society Open Science
Katharina Gangl, Daniela M Pfabigan, Claus Lamm, Erich Kirchler, Eva Hofmann
Cooperation in social systems such as tax honesty is of central importance in our modern societies. However, we know little about cognitive and neural processes driving decisions to evade or pay taxes. This study focuses on the impact of perceived tax authority and examines the mental chronometry mirrored in ERP data allowing a deeper understanding about why humans cooperate in tax systems. We experimentally manipulated coercive and legitimate authority and studied its impact on cooperation and underlying cognitive (experiment 1, 2) and neuronal (experiment 2) processes...
April 11, 2017: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Ellen Binder, Anna Dovern, Maike D Hesse, Markus Ebke, Hans Karbe, Jochen Saliger, Gereon R Fink, Peter H Weiss
More than two decades ago, the mirror neuron system (MNS) was discovered in non-human primates: Single-cell recordings detected visuo-motor neurons that discharged not only when the monkey performed an action, but also when it observed conspecifics performing the same action. It has been proposed that a fronto-parietal circuitry constitutes the human homolog of the MNS. However, the functional role of a human MNS (i.e., whether it is functionally necessary for imitation or action understanding) to date remains controversial...
February 24, 2017: Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior
Pouria Dasmeh, Kasper P Kepp
Positive (adaptive) selection has recently been implied in human superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1), a highly abundant antioxidant protein with energy signaling and antiaging functions, one of very few examples of direct selection on a human protein product (exon); the molecular drivers of this selection are unknown. We mapped 30 extant SOD1 sequences to the recently established mammalian species tree and inferred ancestors, key substitutions, and signatures of selection during the protein's evolution. We detected elevated substitution rates leading to great apes (Hominidae) at ~1 per 2 million years, significantly higher than in other primates and rodents, although these paradoxically generally evolve much faster...
April 7, 2017: Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences: CMLS
Efrat Levy
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are nanoscale size vesicles secreted by cells and are important mediators of intercellular communication and genetic exchange. Exosomes, EVs generated in endosomal multivesicular bodies, have been the focus of numerous publications as they have emerged as clinically valuable markers of disease states. Exosomes have been mostly studied from conditioned culture media and body fluids, with the difficulty of isolating exosomes from tissues having delayed their study in vivo. The implementation of a method designed to isolate exosomes from tissues, however, has yielded the first insights into characteristics of exosomes in the brain...
2017: Frontiers in Neuroscience
Alessandro Gallo, Marjolein Leerink, Benoît Michot, Eman Ahmed, Patrice Forget, André Mouraux, Emmanuel Hermans, Ronald Deumens
Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) is one of the neuropeptides showing the strongest up-regulation in the nociceptive pathway after peripheral nerve injury and has been proposed to support neuropathic pain. Nevertheless, the story may be more complicated considering the known suppressive effects of the peptide on the immune reactivity of microglial cells, which have been heavily implicated in the onset and maintenance of pain after nerve injury. We here used mice deficient in VIP and the model of spared nerve injury, characterized by persistent tactile hypersensitivity...
March 27, 2017: Experimental Neurology
Ho Jeong Lee, Young Mi Kim, Dong Kyu Lee
[Purpose] The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of action observation training and mirror therapy to improve on balance and gait function of stroke patients. [Subjects and Methods] The participants were randomly allocated to one of three groups: The action observation training with activity group practiced additional action observation training with activity for three 30-minute session for six weeks (n=12). The mirror therapy with activity group practiced additional mirror therapy with activity for three 30-minute sessions for six weeks (n=11)...
March 2017: Journal of Physical Therapy Science
Shiri Simon, Roy Mukamel
Mirror neurons are a subset of brain cells that discharge during action execution and passive observation of similar actions. An open question concerns the functional role of their ability to match observed and executed actions. Since understanding of goals requires conscious perception of actions, we expect that mirror neurons potentially involved in action goal coding, will be modulated by changes in action perception level. Here, we manipulated perception level of action videos depicting short hand movements and measured the corresponding fMRI BOLD responses in mirror regions...
February 17, 2017: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Anat Perry, Samantha N Saunders, Jennifer Stiso, Callum Dewar, Jamie Lubell, Torstein R Meling, Anne-Kristin Solbakk, Tor Endestad, Robert T Knight
Humans are highly social beings that interact with each other on a daily basis. In these complex interactions, we get along by being able to identify others' actions and infer their intentions, thoughts and feelings. One of the major theories accounting for this critical ability assumes that the understanding of social signals is based on a primordial tendency to simulate observed actions by activating a mirror neuron system. If mirror neuron regions are important for action and emotion recognition, damage to regions in this network should lead to deficits in these domains...
April 1, 2017: Brain: a Journal of Neurology
Panagiotis G Simos, Eleftherios Kavroulakis, Thomas Maris, Efrosini Papadaki, Themistoklis Boursianis, Giorgos Kalaitzakis, Helen E Savaki
We used fMRI to assess the human brain areas activated for execution, observation and 1st person motor imagery of a visually guided tracing task with the index finger. Voxel-level conjunction analysis revealed several cortical areas activated in common across all three motor conditions, namely, the upper limb representation of the primary motor and somatosensory cortices, the dorsal and ventral premotor, the superior and inferior parietal cortices as well as the posterior part of the superior and middle temporal gyrus including the temporo-parietal junction (TPj) and the extrastriate body area (EBA)...
March 18, 2017: NeuroImage
Eline J Kraaijenvanger, Dennis Hofman, Peter A Bos
Facial expressions are considered central in conveying information about one's emotional state. During social encounters, facial expressions of another individual are often automatically imitated by the observer, a process referred to as 'facial mimicry'. This process is assumed to facilitate prosocial behaviour and is thought to rely on the mirror neuron system, known for its involvement in both observation and execution of motor actions. However, recent studies have revealed mimicry to be a more dynamic process than previously conceptualized, leaving mere perception-action coupling insufficient to explain its behavioural flexibility...
March 18, 2017: Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
March 21, 2017: Swiss Medical Weekly
Julio Plata-Bello, Yaiza Pérez-Martín, Abril Castañón-Pérez, Cristián Modroño, Helga Fariña, Estefanía Hernández-Martín, Montserrat González-Platas, Francisco Marcano, José Luis González-Mora
To study the visuospatial/visuoperceptive function using a mirror neuron system (MNS) based approach in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and a healthy control group. Two task-based fMRIs (an execution task and an observation task) and one resting-fMRI were performed in a group of MS patients (n = 24) and a group of healthy controls (n = 15). The execution and observation tasks consisted of the performance or observation of the index-thumb opposition task. Statistical parametric mapping approaches were used to identify differences in the brain activity and functional connectivity (FC) of the MNS between MS patients and healthy controls...
March 17, 2017: Brain Topography
Anna Bodnar, Janusz K Rybakowski
Objective: To assess both cognitive and affective empathy in patients with bipolar disorder (BD) during an acute manic or depressive episode. Methods: The study included 25 patients with BD (aged 35±14 years) during an acute manic episode, 25 bipolar patients (aged 41±14 years) during a depressive episode, and 25 healthy control subjects (aged 36±11 years). Cognitive and affective empathy were assessed using the Multifaceted Empathy Test. Results: In both manic and depressive patients, a significant deficit in cognitive empathy was demonstrated...
March 13, 2017: Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria
Baland Jalal, Vilayanur S Ramachandran
No abstract text is available yet for this article.
2017: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
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