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Hierarchical and Context-Dependent Encoding of Actions in Human Posterior Parietal and Motor Cortex
Vasiliki Bougou1, Jorge Gamez1, Emily R Rosario2
1Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
Biorxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology
|November 26, 2025
Summary
The superior parietal lobule (SPL), not just the motor cortex (MC), flexibly processes observed actions for understanding. This brain region shows context-dependent action representation crucial for linking vision to motor goals.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Motor Control
Background:
- Action understanding relies on internal models connecting visual input to motor intentions.
- While mirror neurons in monkeys show motor resonance during action observation, human evidence is limited.
- The role of motor resonance versus other mechanisms in human action understanding remains debated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate neural representations of intended and observed hand actions in human motor cortex (MC) and superior parietal lobule (SPL).
- To determine if human action understanding relies solely on motor resonance or involves other neural computations.
- To explore how brain regions like MC and SPL differentiate between intention and observation, and how context influences these representations.
Main Methods:
- Recorded neural activity from MC and SPL using Utah arrays in two tetraplegic participants.
- Participants intended and observed hand actions, including conditions with incongruent instructed and observed actions.
- Analyzed single-unit and population-level activity to identify neural encoding of intention and observation.
Main Results:
- Motor cortex (MC) strongly encoded intended actions but showed limited, population-level overlap with observed actions.
- Superior parietal lobule (SPL) demonstrated shared neural representations for both intended and observed actions at single-unit and population levels.
- SPL exhibited context-dependent encoding of observed actions, gating them based on behavioral relevance, unlike the intention-dominant MC.
Conclusions:
- SPL plays a critical role in action understanding by flexibly linking observed actions with internal goals.
- A hierarchical organization is suggested, with MC maintaining intention-specific codes and SPL integrating sensory information for goal-directed behavior.
- The findings reveal a context-dependent gating mechanism in SPL, crucial for flexible action understanding.
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