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Neuroscientists have identified neurons in monkey brains that may be involved in grouping different types of movements into abstract categories.
It's hard to remember a large number of individual complex movements, but grouping them into general categories can make a task easier. Online in Nature, Jun Tanji and colleagues describe neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex that become active before certain categories of movement. Their presence suggests that the monkeys use a 'grouping' strategy to help remember complex sequences of movements. And alongside previous work, the current study suggests that abstract grouping may be a general property of the prefrontal cortex. CONTACT Jun Tanji (Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan)
E-mail: tanjij@mail.tains.tohoku.ac.jp Abstract available online. (C) Nature press release.
Message posted by: Trevor M. D'Souza
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