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Neural correlates of mental rehearsal in dorsal premotor cortex

Nature volume 431, pages 993–996 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

Behavioural and imaging studies suggest that when humans mentally rehearse a familiar action they execute some of the same neural operations used during overt motor performance1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Similarly, neural activation is present during action observation in many of the same brain regions normally used for performance, including premotor cortex6,7,8,9. Here we present behavioural evidence that monkeys also engage in mental rehearsal during the observation of sensory events associated with a well-learned motor task. Furthermore, most task-related neurons in dorsal premotor cortex exhibit the same activity patterns during observation as during performance, even during an instructed-delay period before any actual observed motion. This activity might be a single-neuron correlate of covert mental rehearsal.

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Figure 1: Behavioural data.
Figure 2: Neural data.
Figure 3: Activity of a PMd neuron during performance (red) and observation in trials in which the experimenter either moved promptly to the correct target (blue), delayed and then moved to the correct target (purple), moved to the opposite target and then reversed (orange), or moved to the opposite target (green).

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Ajemian, T. Drew and S. Wise for comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript. This study was supported by operating grants to J.F.K. from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Human Frontier Science Program, and the New Emerging Team Grant in Computational Neuroscience (CIHR), and by NIH and FCAR postdoctoral fellowships to P.C.

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  1. Département de physiologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128 Succursale Centreville, Montréal, H3C 3J7, Québec, Canada

    Paul Cisek & John F. Kalaska

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  1. Paul Cisek
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Correspondence to John F. Kalaska.

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Supplementary Information

This file includes Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Data and Supplementary Discussion. (DOC 135 kb)

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Cisek, P., Kalaska, J. Neural correlates of mental rehearsal in dorsal premotor cortex. Nature 431, 993–996 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03005

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