Our understanding of the functions of motor system evolved remarkably in the last 20 years.
This is the consequence not only of an increase in the amount of data on this system but …

The parieto-frontal cortical circuit that is active during action observation is the circuit with
mirror properties that has been most extensively studied. Yet, there remains controversy on …

Mirror neurons were discovered over twenty years ago in the ventral premotor region F5 of
the macaque monkey. Since their discovery much has been written about these neurons …

Long-standing speculations and more recent hypotheses propose a variety of possible
evolutionary connections between language, gesture and tool use. These arguments have …

About 40 years ago, James J. Gibson coined the term “affordance” to describe the action
possibilities offered to an animal by the environment with reference to the animal's action …

Despite the prominence of parietal activity in human neuroimaging investigations of
sensorimotor and cognitive processes, there remains uncertainty about basic aspects of …

Tool use is a defining feature of human species. Therefore, a fundamental issue is to
understand the cognitive bases of human tool use. Given that people cannot use tools …

Highlights•Provides an up-to-date overview of human brain areas implicated in
actions.•Reviews new advances from brain decoding (multivariate pattern analysis …

In this review, we propose that the neural basis for the spontaneous, diversified human tool
use is an area devoted to the execution and observation of tool actions, located in the left …

In the winter of 1991 I (GR) sent to Nature a report on a surprising set of neurons that we
(Giuseppe Di Pellegrino, Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi, Vittorio Gallese) had found in …