Non-Conspecific Action Observation

Project Summary

One day I woke up and wondered how human brains would encode impossible actions such as human flight with wings or 3rd party robotic arms using mind control.

I found a lab at my alma mater KU Leuven and decided to study this. Old world (from African/Asian continent) monkeys such as rhesus macaques have a tail, but never use it for grasping. We also know that action observation is encoded very similarly in the brain as action execution.

This is why we decided to create 3D models of monkey grasping and comparing hand versus tail grasping actions (see Figure above), and show it to rhesus Macaques while scanning their brains using unctional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).

Initial results showed that observing impossible actions elicited a similar response in mirror neuron motor areas such as F5– As if the monkey were conducting the impossible actions themselves . I was offered a PhD to continue this work but decided to move to the United States instead to further my studies at UC Berkeley and UCSF.