Observing accidental and intentional unusual actions is associated with different subregions of the medial frontal cortex.

The literature on action observation revealed contradictory results regarding the activation of different subregions of the medial prefrontal cortex when observing unusual behaviour. Error observation research has shown that the posterior part of the medial prefrontal cortex is more active when observing unusual behaviour compared to usual behaviour while action understanding research has revealed some mixed results concerning the role of the anterior part of the medial prefrontal cortex during the observation of unusual actions. Here, we resolve this discrepancy in the literature by showing that different parts of the medial prefrontal cortex are active depending on whether an observed unusual behaviour is intentional or not. While the posterior medial prefrontal cortex is more active when we observe unusual accidental actions compared to unusual intentional actions, a more anterior part of the medial prefrontal cortex is more active when we observe unusual intentional actions compared to unusual accidental actions.