Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2008 - Volume 31, Issue 01  

Open Peer Commentary

Mesial frontal cortex and super mirror neurons

Marco Iacobonia1

a1 Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Brain Research Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; and Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, Los Angeles, CA 90095. iacoboni@loni.ucla.edu http://iacoboni.bmap.ucla.edu

Abstract

Depth electrode recordings in the human mesial frontal cortex have revealed individual neurons with mirror properties. A third of these cells have excitatory properties during action execution and inhibitory properties during action observation. These cells – which we call super mirror neurons – provide the neural mechanism that implements the functions of layers 3+4 of the shared circuits model (SCM).

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