Functional interactions of frontal areas in social action monitoring

Monitoring others’ actions and their consequences is a fundamental ability for adaptive social exchanges. While the ventral premotor cortex (PMv) and the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) in the frontal lobe play important roles in processing social action information, these areas are rarely concurrently active in neuroimaging, leading to the hypothesis that they are functionally independent or even mutually exclusive. In my presentation, I will introduce our recent challenges, using electrophysiological recordings and pathway-specific intervention techniques, to elucidate functional differences and interactions between the two frontal areas in social action monitoring. I will propose that the PMv-to-MPFC pathway is causally involved in the monitoring of observed, but not executed, actions for optimal social decision-making.