Distinct EEG amplitude suppression to facial gestures as evidence for a mirror mechanism in newborn monkeys

Ferrari, PF, Vanderwert, RE, Paukner, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3421-1864, Bower, S, Suomi, SJ and Fox, NA, 2012. Distinct EEG amplitude suppression to facial gestures as evidence for a mirror mechanism in newborn monkeys. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 24 (5), pp. 1165-1172. ISSN 0898-929X

Preview

Text 1427708_Paukner.pdf - Post-print Download (895kB) | Preview

Abstract

At birth, human infants and newborns of other primate species demonstrate the capacity to attend and to respond to facial stimuli provided by a caregiver. Newborn infants are also capable of exhibiting a range of facial expressions. Identification of the neural underpinnings of these capacities represents a formidable challenge in understanding social development. One possible neuronal substrate is the mirror-neuron system assumed to activate shared motor cortical representations for both observation and production of actions. We tested this hypothesis by recording scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) from 1–7 days old newborn rhesus macaques who were observing and producing facial gestures. We found that 5–6 Hz EEG activity was suppressed both when the infants produced facial gestures and while they were observing facial gestures of a human experimenter, but not when they were observing non-biological stimuli. These findings demonstrate the presence of neural reactivity for biological, communicatively-relevant stimuli which may be a likely signature of neuronal mirroring. The basic elements of the mirror-neuron system appear to operate from the very first days of life and contribute to the encoding of socially relevant stimuli.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Creators:	Ferrari, P.F., Vanderwert, R.E., Paukner, A., Bower, S., Suomi, S.J. and Fox, N.A.
Publisher:	MIT Press
Date:	May 2012
Volume:	24
Number:	5
ISSN:	0898-929X
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1162/jocn_a_00198 DOI 1427708 Other
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	29 Mar 2021 09:04
Last Modified:	31 May 2021 15:05
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/42614

Actions (login required)

Edit View

Statistics

Views

Downloads