News Releases & Research Results Neural circuits responsible for monitoring others’ actions

The results of research conducted by Assistant Professor Taihei Ninomiya, Assistant Professor Atsushi Noritake, Associate Professor Kenta Kobayashi, and Professor Masaki Isoda of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, National Institutes of Natural Sciences.

• The ventral premotor and medial prefrontal cortices in the cerebrum were activated differently depending on others’ actions. In addition, functional connectivity between brain regions was critical for monitoring others’ actions.
• The results of this research project should facilitate the elucidation of the mechanisms for action monitoring, which plays a fundamental role in social life, and relevant neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder, which preclude the monitoring.

This program was implemented with the support of the Strategic International Brain Science Research Promotion Program by AMED.

The results were published in Nature Communications on October 16.

Ninomiya T., et al. A causal role for frontal cortico-cortical coordination in social action monitoring Nature Communications
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19026-y