A causal role for frontal cortico-cortical coordination in social action monitoring

Decision-making via monitoring others’ actions is a cornerstone of interpersonal exchanges. Although the ventral premotor cortex (PMv) and the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) are cortical nodes in social brain networks, the two areas are rarely concurrently active in neuroimaging, inviting the hypothesis that they are functionally independent. Here we show in macaques that the ability of the MPFC to monitor others’ actions depends on input from the PMv. We found that delta-band coherence between the two areas emerged during action execution and action observation. Information flow especially in the delta band increased from the PMv to the MPFC as the biological nature of observed actions increased. Furthermore, selective blockade of the PMv-to-MPFC pathway using a double viral vector infection technique impaired the processing of observed, but not executed, actions. These findings demonstrate that coordinated activity in the PMv-to-MPFC pathway has a causal role in social action monitoring.