Individuals' and groups' intentions in the medial prefrontal cortex

Functional MRI signal was recorded while participants perceived stimuli presented using moving dots. In two conditions of interest, the motion of dots depicted intentions: dots representing the joints of an agent performing an action, and dots representing individual agents behaving contingently. The finding of a common cluster in the posterior part of the medial frontal cortex involved in intentional action representation validates the hypothesis that perception of these two conditions requires a similar internal representation. A cluster responding to the behaving group only is found in the anterior medial frontal cortex. These results support a division of the medial frontal cortex according to social stimuli attributes, with anterior areas responding to higher-order group behaviours integrating the action of multiple individual agents. NeuroReport 22:814-818 (C) 2011 Wolters Kluwer Health vertical bar Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.