Marco LanzilottoUniversità di Parma | UNIPR · Department of Medicine and Surgery
Marco Lanzilotto
Ph.D. in Neuroscience
About
30
Publications
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Introduction
I earned my degree in biology and PhD in neuroscience at the University of Modena. I spent 1 year at Princeton University (Dept of Psychology, USA) working with A Ghazanfar. Next, I worked for 5 years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Parma, where I investigated the neural basis of action observation in the context of several EU-funded projects; more recently, I have been investigating the neural mechanisms of visual awareness. In 2021, I received the Young Investigator Grant from the BBRF to lead a project on the neural mechanisms of facial mimicry in primates
Additional affiliations
Education
April 2013
January 2011 - January 2012
January 2010 - January 2013
Publications
Publications (30)
Grasping relies on a network of parieto-frontal areas lying on the dorsolateral and dorsomedial parts of the hemispheres. However, the initiation and sequencing of voluntary actions also requires the contribution of mesial premotor regions, particularly the pre-supplementary motor area F6. We recorded 233 F6 neurons from 2 monkeys with chronic line...
Following gaze is a crucial skill, in primates, for understanding where and at what others are looking, and often requires head rotation. The neural basis underlying head rotation are deemed to overlap with the parieto-frontal attention/gaze-shift network. Here, we show that a set of neurons in monkey’s Brodmann area 9/46dr (BA 9/46dr), which is in...
Current knowledge regarding the processing of observed manipulative actions (OMAs) (e.g., grasping, dragging, or dropping) is limited to grasping and underlying neural circuitry remains controversial. Here, we addressed these issues by combining chronic neuronal recordings along the anteroposterior extent of monkeys' anterior intraparietal (AIP) ar...
Significance
The anterior intraparietal area (AIP) is a crucial hub in the observed manipulative action (OMA) network of primates. While macaques observe manipulative action videos, their AIP neuronal activity robustly encodes first the viewpoint from which the action is observed, then the actor’s body posture, and finally the observed-action ident...
Others’ observed actions cause continuously changing retinal images, making it challenging to build neural representations of action identity. The monkey anterior intraparietal area (AIP) and its putative human homologue (phAIP) host neurons selective for observed manipulative actions (OMAs). The neuronal activity of both AIP and phAIP allows a sta...
The neural processing of others' observed actions recruits a large network of brain regions (the action observation network, AON), in which frontal motor areas are thought to play a crucial role. Since the discovery of mirror neurons (MNs) in the ventral premotor cortex, it has been assumed that their activation was conditional upon the presentatio...
The action observation network (AON) includes a system of brain areas largely shared with action execution in both human and nonhuman primates. Yet temporal and tuning specificities of distinct areas and of physiologically identified neuronal classes in the encoding of self and others' action remain unknown. We recorded the activity of 355 single u...
Objective. Previous studies demonstrated the possibility to fabricate stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG) probes with high channel count and great design freedom, which incorporate macro-electrodes as well as micro-electrodes offering potential benefits for the pre-surgical evaluation of drug resistant epileptic patients. These new polyimide probe...
The pre-supplementary motor area F6 is involved in a variety of functions in multiple domains, from planning/withholding goal-directed actions in space to rule-based cognitive processes and social interactions. Yet, the neural machinery underlying this functional heterogeneity remains unclear. Here, we measured local population dynamics in differen...
Significance
Social animals exploit information about objects for planning actions and for predicting those of others. Here, we show that pre-supplementary motor area F6 hosts different types of neurons responding to visually presented objects when they are targeted by the monkey’s own action (self-type), another agent’s action (other-type), or bot...
Intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) is one of the most widely employed techniques for providing causal evidence of the relationship between neuronal activity and specific motor, perceptual, or even cognitive functions. In recent years, several new types of linear multielectrode silicon probes have been developed, allowing researchers to sample ne...
Objective:
Application-specific designs of electrode arrays offer an improved effectiveness for providing access to targeted brain regions in neuroscientific research and brain machine interfaces. The simultaneous and stable recording of neuronal ensembles is the main goal in the design of advanced neural interfaces. Here, we describe the developm...
This study investigates the properties of Mirror Neurons of are Pre-SMA F6 during the observation of a go/no-go reaching-grasping task performed in both the: a) extrapersonal space; b) peripersonal space.
Objective:
Drug resistant focal epilepsy can be treated by resecting the epileptic focus requiring a precise focus localisation using stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG) probes. As commercial SEEG probes offer only a limited spatial resolution, probes of higher channel count and design freedom enabling the incorporation of macro and microelectrode...
The effect of intracortical microstimulation has been studied in several cortical areas from motor to sensory areas. The frontal pole has received particular attention, and several microstimulation studies have been conducted in the Frontal Eye Field (FEF), Supplementary Eye Field (SEF), and the Premotor Ear-Eye Field (PEEF), but no microstimulatio...
The Supplementary Eye Field (SEF) and the Frontal Eye Field (FEF) have been described as participating in gaze shift control. Recent evidence suggests, however, that other areas of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex also influence gaze shift. Herein, we have investigated electrically evoked ear- and eye movements from the Premotor Ear-Eye Field, or...
Hearing is especially important for most primate species as they live in habitats of dense vegetation that limits vision. Stebbins (1980) summed up the evolution of the auditory system by assuming that earliest mammals exploited nocturnal niches since they were relatively free of many of the large, diurnal, predacious reptiles. Therefore, hearing a...
Hearing is especially important for most primate species since they live in habitats of dense vegetation that limits vision. Thus, communication sounds can be used to identify and locate others (Toth & Assad, 2002) and modify behaviours, and sounds can warn the approach of an unseen predator. To detect auditory stimuli with high social meaning, pri...
Evolutionary hypotheses regarding the origins of communication signals generally suggest, particularly for the case of primate orofacial signals, that they derive by ritualization of noncommunicative behaviors, notably including ingestive behaviors such as chewing and nursing. These theories are appealing in part because of the prominent periodicit...
We studied the activity of single neurons in the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) of macaque monkeys as they performed two visuomotor tasks, called the visual fixation task and the visual fixation-blink task. Both tasks involved a sequence of three visual stimuli, red followed by yellow and green. The tasks differed in that the latter one had...
In macaque monkeys, area 8B may be considered cytoarchitectonically as a transitional area between the granular area 9, rostrally, and the rostral part of the dorsal agranular area 6 (FC or F7), caudally. This area is anatomically connected with auditory cortical areas, cerebellum and superior colliculus. Microstimulation of area 8B evokes ear move...
In previous reports, we showed the involvement of area 8B neurons in both spontaneous ear and eye movement and in auditory information processing. Audition-related cells responded to complex environmental stimuli, but not to pure tones, and their activity changed during visual fixation as a possible inhibitory expression of the engagement of attent...