Reward modulates behaviour and neural responses in motor cortex during action observation

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies demonstrated that observing the actions of other individuals leads to action-specific facilitation of primary motor cortex (M1) (i.e., “motor resonance”). Motor resonance is modulated by contextual information accompanying others’ actions, however, it is currently unknown whether action value influences behavioural and physiological outcomes during action observation in humans. Here we tested whether response times (RT) and muscle-specific changes of M1 excitability are modulated by the value an observer assigns to the action executed by another agent and whether this effect can be distinguished from attentional engagement. We show that observing highly-valued actions leads to a significant decrease in RT variability and a significant strengthening of action-specific neural representations in M1. This “sharpening” of behavioural and neural responses was observed over and beyond a control task requiring similar attentional engagement but did not include any rewards. Our finding that reward influences action specific representations in human M1 even if no motor response is required is new, suggesting that reward influences the transformation of action stimuli from the perceptual to the motor domain. We suggest that premotor areas are important for mediating the observed effect, most likely by optimizing grasp-specific PMv-M1 interactions which cause muscular facilitation patterns in M1 to be more distinct for rewarded actions.