Macaque facial gestures are more than just a reflex, study finds
Summary
A study implanted multi-electrode arrays in macaque brains to record neurons during three facial gestures and found that all four targeted brain regions participate in generating each gesture. The researchers identified a temporal hierarchy in neural coding, with the cingulate cortex using a static code and motor/somatosensory areas showing dynamic codes to drive facial movements, informing future neural prosthetics research while highlighting the early-stage nature of these findings.