Peer reviewed papers
Current Biology, 2020
The brain mechanism for controlling continuous behavior in dynamic contexts must mediate action s... more The brain mechanism for controlling continuous behavior in dynamic contexts must mediate action selection and learning across many timescales, responding differentially to the level of environmental uncertainty and volatility. In this review, we argue that a part of the frontal cortex known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is particularly well suited for this function. First, the ACC is interconnected with prefrontal, parietal, and subcortical regions involved in valuation and action selection. Second, the ACC integrates diverse, behaviorally relevant information across multiple timescales, producing output signals that temporally encapsulate decision and learning processes and encode high-dimensional information about the value and uncertainty of future outcomes and subsequent behaviors. Third, the ACC signals behaviorally relevant information flexibly, displaying the capacity to represent information about current and future states in a valence-, context-, task- and action-specific manner. Fourth, the ACC dynamically controls instrumental- and non-instrumental information seeking behaviors to resolve uncertainty about future outcomes. We review electrophysiological and circuit disruption studies in primates to develop this point, discuss its relationship to novel therapeutics for neuropsychiatric disorders in humans, and conclude by relating ongoing research in primates to studies of medial frontal cortical regions in rodents.
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Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, 2008
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Experimental Brain Research, 2010
Mirror neurons are a distinct class of neurons that discharge both during the execution of a moto... more Mirror neurons are a distinct class of neurons that discharge both during the execution of a motor act and during observation of the same or similar motor act performed by another individual. However, the extent to which mirror neurons coding a motor act with a specific goal (e.g., grasping) might also respond to the observation of a motor act having the same goal, but achieved with artificial effectors, is not yet established. In the present study, we addressed this issue by recording mirror neurons from the ventral premotor cortex (area F5) of two monkeys trained to grasp objects with pliers. Neuron activity was recorded during the observation and execution of grasping performed with the hand, with pliers and during observation of an experimenter spearing food with a stick. The results showed that virtually all neurons responding to the observation of hand grasping also responded to the observation of grasping with pliers and, many of them to the observation of spearing with a stick. However, the intensity and pattern of the response differed among conditions. Hand grasping observation determined the earliest and the strongest discharge, while pliers grasping and spearing observation triggered weaker responses at longer latencies. We conclude that F5 grasping mirror neurons respond to the observation of a family of stimuli leading to the same goal. However, the response pattern depends upon the similarity between the observed motor act and the one executed by the hand, the natural motor template.
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Current Biology, 2011
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Proceedings of the …, Jan 1, 2012
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Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2015
Over the past two decades, the insula has been described as the sensory "interoc... more Over the past two decades, the insula has been described as the sensory "interoceptive cortex". As a consequence, human brain imaging studies have focused on its role in the sensory perception of emotions. However, evidence from neurophysiological studies in non-human primates have shown that the insula is also involved in generating emotional and communicative facial expressions. In particular, a recent study demonstrated that electrical stimulation of the mid-ventral sector of the insula evoked affiliative facial expressions. The present study aimed to describe the cortical connections of this "affiliative field". To this aim, we identified the region with electrical stimulation and injected neural tracers to label incoming and outgoing projections. Our results show that the insular field underlying emotional expression is part of a network involving specific frontal, cingulate, temporal, and parietal areas, as well as the amygdala, the basal ganglia, and thalamus, indicating that this sector of the insula is a site of integration of motor, emotional, sensory and social information. Together with our previous functional studies, this result challenges the classic view of the insula as a multisensory area merely reflecting bodily and internal visceral states. In contrast, it supports an alternative perspective; that the emotional responses classically attributed to the insular cortex are endowed with an enactive component intrinsic to each social and emotional behavior.
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Proceeding papers & Book chapters
Multi-electrode arrays contain an increasing number of electrodes. The manual selection of good q... more Multi-electrode arrays contain an increasing number of electrodes. The manual selection of good quality signals among hundreds of electrodes becomes impracticable for experimental neuroscientists. This increases the need for an automated selection of electrodes containing good quality signals. To motivate the automated selection, three experimenters were asked to assign quality scores, taking one of four possible values, to recordings containing action potentials obtained from the monkey primary somatosensory cortex and the superior parietal lobule. Krippendorff’s alpha-reliability was then used to verify whether the scores, given by different experimenters, were in agreement. A Gaussian process classifier was used to automate the prediction of the signal quality using the scores of the different experimenters. Prediction accuracies of the Gaussian process classifier are about 80% when the quality scores of different experimenters are combined, through a median vote, to train the Gaussian process classifier. It was found that predictions based also on firing rate features are in closer agreement with the experimenters’ assignments than those based on the signal-to-noise ratio alone.
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This paper reports on a novel type of silicon- based microprobes with linear, two and three dimen... more This paper reports on a novel type of silicon- based microprobes with linear, two and three dimensional (3D) distribution of their recording sites. The microprobes comprise either single shafts, combs with multiple shafts or 3D arrays combining two combs with 9, 36 or 72 recording sites, respectively. The electrical interconnection of the probes is achieved through highly flexible polyimide ribbon cables attached using the MicroFlex Technology which allows a connection part of small lateral dimensions. For an improved handling, probes can be secured by a protecting canula. Low-impedance electrodes are achieved by the deposition of platinum black. First in vivo experiments proved the capability to record single action potentials in the motor cortex from electrodes close to the tip as well as body electrodes along the shaft.
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Posters & Abstracts
Online, 2008
Electrical recording of single neuron activity as well as local field potentials (LFP) for fundam... more Electrical recording of single neuron activity as well as local field potentials (LFP) for fundamental research and clinical applications has relied on a variety of techniques including recently developed, silicon based electrode arrays. These multi electrode arrays (MEA) permit to record a large number of neurons and may provide laminar information. The European project NeuroProbes aims to provide an integrative solution for stable chronic neurophysiological recordings of neural networks in 3D. Here we report on the fabrication ...
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Papers
Current Biology, Dec 1, 2020
The brain mechanism for controlling continuous behavior in dynamic contexts must mediate action s... more The brain mechanism for controlling continuous behavior in dynamic contexts must mediate action selection and learning across many timescales, responding differentially to the level of environmental uncertainty and volatility. In this review, we argue that a part of the frontal cortex known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is particularly well suited for this function. First, the ACC is interconnected with prefrontal, parietal, and subcortical regions involved in valuation and action selection. Second, the ACC integrates diverse, behaviorally relevant information across multiple timescales, producing output signals that temporally encapsulate decision and learning processes and encode high-dimensional information about the value and uncertainty of future outcomes and subsequent behaviors. Third, the ACC signals behaviorally relevant information flexibly, displaying the capacity to represent information about current and future states in a valence-, context-, task- and action-specific manner. Fourth, the ACC dynamically controls instrumental- and non-instrumental information seeking behaviors to resolve uncertainty about future outcomes. We review electrophysiological and circuit disruption studies in primates to develop this point, discuss its relationship to novel therapeutics for neuropsychiatric disorders in humans, and conclude by relating ongoing research in primates to studies of medial frontal cortical regions in rodents.
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Current Biology, Feb 1, 2011
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bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Mar 13, 2021
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Nature Neuroscience, Dec 13, 2021
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Brain Sciences
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