Neuronal representations of executed and withheld actions in the macaque presupplementary motor area F6

Abstract

To plan an action and performing or withholding it requires an agent to consider contextual information such as the presence of another individual, the type of object or physical barrier preventing the subject to act. Studies in the last thirty years have assigned to the pre-supplementary motor area F6 a role in the encoding of high-order aspects of motor planning, but its relative contribution in coding executed or withheld actions of self and others is unknown. We trained monkeys to perform a Go/No-go visuomotor task and to observe an experimenter doing the same task. We identified five different populations of neurons responding to specific contextual information during task execution: some showed facilitate (Hexc cells) or suppressed (Hsup cells) response during Go trials, others were facilitated (HLexc) or suppressed (HLsup) during both Go and NoGo trials, and another set was modulated only during Nogo trials with a suppressed response (Lsup). Our findings suggest that these different sets of neurons may provide signals orchestrating releasing and withholding mechanisms underlying self and others’ goal directed actions.