From mirror neurons to joint actions

Mirror neurons are widely regarded as an important key to social cognition. Despite such wide agreement, there is very little consensus on how or why they are important. The goal of this paper is to clearly explicate the exact role mirror neurons play in social cognition. I aim to answer two questions about the relationship between mirroring and social cognition: What kind of social understanding is involved with mirroring? How is mirroring related to that understanding? I argue that philosophical and empirical considerations lead us to accord a fairly minimal role for mirror neurons in social cognition.

International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 2016

Actions done by others are probably the most important stimuli of our lives. Most of others" actions do not convey intentional information to the observer. From them, however, we understand what others are doing and we can infer why they are doing it. This involuntary communication is fundamental for interpersonal relations, and is at the basis of social life. What is the mechanism underlying our capacity to understand others" actions? The traditional view is that actions done by others are understood in the same way as other visual stimuli. Thus, action understanding is based on the visual analysis of the different elements that form an action. For example, when we observe a girl picking up a flower, the analyzed elements would be her hand, the flower, and the movement of the hand towards the flower. The association of these elements and inferences about their interaction enables the observer to understand the witnessed action. The discovery of neurons that code selectively biological motion has better specified the neural basis of this recognition mechanism. These theoretical considerations received strong support from the discovery that in the motor cortex of the macaque monkey there is a particular set of neurons that discharge both when the monkey observes a given motor act and when it does the same act. These neurons called "mirror neurons," represent a system that directly matches observed and executed actions.

Physics of Life Reviews, 2015

D'Ausilio et al. must be praised for bringing attention to the important question of how human Mirror Neurons (MNs) may contribute to action perception, prediction and understanding [1] and for linking their role with the granularity of the motor system as conceptualized in the domain of action control theories. Although we think that the Authors are right in saying that the granularity of the motor system constrains the granularity of the MN system, we speculate that the contribution of MNs to action perception, prediction and understanding is also constrained by the connections between MNs and other cortical and subcortical regions, and by the identity of MNs, i.e. whether they are interneurons or pyramidal cells . In other words, the functional contribution of MS depends on whether they are connected to sensory, emotional and cognitive networks for the service of action perception, prediction and understanding.

2012

The tuning-fork model of human social cognition, based on the discovery of mirror neurons (MNs) in the ventral premotor cortex of monkeys, involves the four following assumptions: (1) mirroring processes are processes of resonance or simulation. (2) They can be motor or non-motor. (3) Processes of motor mirroring (or action-mirroring), exemplified by the activity of MNs, constitute instances of third-person mindreading, whereby an observer represents the agent's intention. (4) Non-motor mirroring processes enable humans to represent others' emotions. After questioning all four assumptions, I point out that MNs in an observer's brain could not synchronically resonate with MNs in an agent's brain unless they discharged in a single brain in two distinct tasks at different times. Finally, I sketch a conceptualist alternative to the resonance model according to which a brain mechanism active in both the execution and the perception of e.g., the act of grasping is the neural basis of the concept of e.g., grasping.

Cognitive Systems Research, 2015

Mirror neuron research has come a long way since the early 90’s, and many theorists are now stressing the heterogeneity and complexity of the sensorimotor properties of fronto-parietal circuits. However, core aspects of the initial ‘mirror mechanism’ theory, i.e. the idea of a symmetric encapsulated mirroring function translating sensory action perceptions into motor formats, still appears to be shaping much of the debate. This article challenges the empirical plausibility of the sensorimotor segregation implicit in the original mirror metaphor. It is proposed instead that the teleological organization found in the broader fronto-parietal circuits might be inherently sensorimotor. Thus the idea of an independent ‘purely perceptual’ goal understanding process is questioned. Further, it is hypothesized that the often asymmetric, heterogeneous and contextually modulated mirror and canonical neurons support a function of multisensory mapping and tracking of the perceiving agents affordance space. Such a shift in the interpretative framework offers a different theoretical handle on how sensorimotor processes might ground various aspects of intentional action choice and social cognition. Mirror neurons would under the proposed “social affordance model” be seen as dynamic parts of larger circuits, which support tracking of currently shared and competing action possibilities. These circuits support action selection processes—but also our understanding of the options and action potentials that we and perhaps others have in the affordance space. In terms of social cognition ‘mirror’ circuits might thus help us understand not only the intentional actions others are actually performing—but also what they could have done, did not do and might do shortly.

This article argues that mirror neurons originate in sensorimotor associative learning and therefore a new approach is needed to investigate their functions. Mirror neurons were discovered about 20 years ago in the monkey brain, and there is now evidence that they are also present in the human brain. The intriguing feature of many mirror neurons is that they fire not only when the animal is performing an action, such as grasping an object using a power grip, but also when the animal passively observes a similar action performed by another agent. It is widely believed that mirror neurons are a genetic adaptation for action understanding; that they were designed by evolution to fulfill a specific sociocognitive function. In contrast, we argue that mirror neurons are forged by domain-general processes of associative learning in the course of individual development, and, although they may have psychological functions, they do not necessarily have a specific evolutionary purpose or adaptive function. The evidence supporting this view shows that 1) mirror neurons do not consistently encode action 'goals'; 2) the contingency-and context-sensitive nature of associative learning explains the full range of mirror neuron properties; 3) human infants receive enough sensorimotor experience to support associative learning of mirror neurons ('wealth of the stimulus'); and 4) mirror neurons can be changed in radical ways by sensorimotor training. The associative account implies that reliable information about the function of mirror neurons can be obtained only by research based on developmental history, system-level theory, and careful experimentation.

Progress in brain research, 2007

In this chapter we discuss the mirror-neurons system, a cortical network of areas that enables individuals to understand the meaning of actions performed by others through the activation of internal representations, which motorically code for the observed actions. We review evidence indicating that this capability does not depend on the amount of visual stimulation relative to the observed action, or on the sensory modality specifically addressed (visual, acoustical). Any sensorial cue that can evoke the ''idea'' of a meaningful action activates the vocabulary of motor representations stored in the ventral premotor cortex and, in humans, especially in Broca's area. This is true also for phonoarticulatory actions, which determine speech production. We present also a model of the mirror-neurons system and its partial implementation in a set of two experiments. The results, according to our model, show that motor information plays a significant role in the interpretation of actions and that a mirror-like representation can be developed autonomously as a result of the interaction between the individual and the environment.

Mirror Neuron Systems, 2009

The relevance of the discovery of mirror neurons in monkeys and of the mirror neuron system in humans to a neuroscientific account of primates' social cognition and its evolution is discussed. It is proposed that mirror neurons and the functional mechanism they underpin, embodied simulation, can ground within a unitary neurophysiological explanatory framework important aspects of human social cognition. A neurophysiological hypothesis -the ''neural exploitation hypothesis'' -is introduced to explain how key aspects of human social cognition are underpinned by brain mechanisms originally evolved for sensory-motor integration. It is proposed that these mechanisms were later on exapted as new neurofunctional architecture for thought and language, while retaining their original functions as well. By neural exploitation, social cognition and language can be linked to the experiential domain of action.

Topics in Cognitive Science, 2009

Mirror neurons fire both when a primate executes a transitive action directed towards a target (e.g., grasping) and when he observes the same action performed by another. According to the prevalent interpretation, action-mirroring is a process of inter-personal neural similarity whereby an observer maps the agent's perceived movements onto her own motor repertoire. Furthermore, ever as Gallese and Goldman's (1998) influential paper, action-mirroring has been linked to third-person mindreading on the grounds that it enables an observer to represent the agent's intention. In this paper, I criticize the prevalent interpretation on two grounds. (a) Action-mirroring could not result in inter-personal neural similarity unless there was a single mechanism active at different times in a single brain during the execution and the perception of acts of grasping. (b) Such a neural mechanism is better conceived as underlying the possession of the concept of grasping than as a basis for mindreading.

Mind & Language, 2008

Interdisciplines. org, 2004

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8, 2014

We focus on the thesis that action understanding is a function of the mirror neuron system. According to our opinion, understanding is a process that runs through hermeneutic circles from the “Vorverständnis” (“previous understanding”) to steps of deeper understanding. Our critique relates to the narrow neuroscientific definition of action understanding as the capacity to recognize several movements as belonging to one action. After a reconstruction of the model's developments, we will challenge the claims of the model by Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia (2010). By analyzing the relation between the experimental results and its interpretation, we will conclude that there is no proof that mirror neuron activity leads to action understanding.

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2011

Mirror neurons (MNs) were first discovered in monkeys and subsequently in humans and birds. While MNs are deemed to play a number of high level cognitive functions, here we propose that they serve a unitary form of sensorimotor recognition of others' behavior. We caution that this basic function should not be confounded with the higher-order functions that stem from the wider cortical systems in which MNs are embedded. Depending on the species, MNs function at different levels of motor event recognition, from motor goals to fine grained movements, thus contributing to social learning and imitative phenomena. Recent studies show that MN coding has a prospective nature, suggesting that MNs also play a role in anticipating and predicting the behavior of others during social interactions. The presence of mirroring mechanisms in subcortical structures related to visceromotor reactions and the large diffusion of imitative phenomena among animals suggest that MN systems may be more ancient and widespread than previously thought.

Trends in cognitive sciences, 2004

In this article we provide a unifying neural hypothesis on how individuals understand the actions and emotions of others. Our main claim is that the fundamental mechanism at the basis of the experiential understanding of others' actions is the activation of the mirror neuron system. A similar mechanism, but involving the activation of viscero-motor centers, underlies the experiential understanding of the emotions of others.