TY - JOUR
T1 - Changes in frontoparietotemporal connectivity following Do-As-I-Do imitation training in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
AU - Pope, Sarah M.
AU - Taglialatela, Jared P.
AU - Skiba, Sara A.
AU - Hopkins, William D.
N1 - Funding Information:
■ Human imitation is supported by an underlying “mirror sys-
Funding Information:
This research was supported by NIH grants NS-42867, NS-73134, HD-60563 to W. D. H. and DC-011005 to J. P. T. In addition, S. M. P. is funded by Georgia State University’s Second Century Initiative Primate Social Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior fellowship and the Kenneth W. and Georganne F. Honeycutt Fellowship. We would also like to thank Kendall Davidek for her time and efforts in verifying interrater reliability. American Psychological Association and Institute of Medicine guidelines for the treatment of animals were followed during all aspects of this study.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
PY - 2018/3/1
Y1 - 2018/3/1
N2 - Human imitation is supported by an underlying “mirror sys-tem” principally composed of inferior frontal, inferior parietal, and superior temporal cortical regions. Across primate species, differences in frontoparietotemporal connectivity have been hypothesized to explain phylogenetic variation in imitative abilities. However, if and to what extent these regions are involved in imitation in nonhuman primates is unknown. We hypothesized that “Do As I Do” (DAID) imitation training would enhance white matter integrity within and between frontoparietotemporal regions. To this end, four captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were trained to reproduce 23 demonstrated actions, and four age-/ sex-matched controls were trained to produce basic husbandry behaviors in response to manual cues. Diffusion tensor images were acquired before and after 600 min of training over an average of 112 days. Bilateral and asymmetrical changes in frontoparietotemporal white matter integrity were compared between DAID trained subjects and controls. We found that imitation trained subjects exhibited leftward shifts in both mean fractional anisotropy and tract strength asymmetry measures in brain regions within the mirror system. This is the first report of training-induced changes in white matter integrity in chimpanzees and suggests that frontoparietotemporal connectivity, particularly in the left hemisphere, may have facilitated the emergence of increasingly complex imitation learning abilities.
AB - Human imitation is supported by an underlying “mirror sys-tem” principally composed of inferior frontal, inferior parietal, and superior temporal cortical regions. Across primate species, differences in frontoparietotemporal connectivity have been hypothesized to explain phylogenetic variation in imitative abilities. However, if and to what extent these regions are involved in imitation in nonhuman primates is unknown. We hypothesized that “Do As I Do” (DAID) imitation training would enhance white matter integrity within and between frontoparietotemporal regions. To this end, four captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were trained to reproduce 23 demonstrated actions, and four age-/ sex-matched controls were trained to produce basic husbandry behaviors in response to manual cues. Diffusion tensor images were acquired before and after 600 min of training over an average of 112 days. Bilateral and asymmetrical changes in frontoparietotemporal white matter integrity were compared between DAID trained subjects and controls. We found that imitation trained subjects exhibited leftward shifts in both mean fractional anisotropy and tract strength asymmetry measures in brain regions within the mirror system. This is the first report of training-induced changes in white matter integrity in chimpanzees and suggests that frontoparietotemporal connectivity, particularly in the left hemisphere, may have facilitated the emergence of increasingly complex imitation learning abilities.
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U2 - 10.1162/jocn_a_01217
DO - 10.1162/jocn_a_01217
M3 - Article
C2 - 29211652
AN - SCOPUS:85041441990
SN - 0898-929X
VL - 30
SP - 421
EP - 431
JO - Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
JF - Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
IS - 3
ER -