Discussion forumMirror neurons, embodied simulation and a second-person approach to mindreading
Section snippets
Mirror neurons (MNs) and embodied simulation (ES)
Intersubjectivity can be profitably understood if framed within a phylogenetic perspective. The discovery of MNs enabled establishing a relation between human intersubjectivity, the inter-individual relations of other animal species and their underpinning neural mechanisms.
MNs are motor neurons first discovered in macaques' premotor area F5 and, later on, also in a sector of the posterior parietal cortex reciprocally connected with area F5 (see Gallese, Gernsbacher, Heyes, Hickock, & Iacoboni,
The so-called “problem of other minds”
A mainstream view in philosophy of mind basically equates human social cognition with social meta-cognition, that is, with the possibility to explicitly reflect upon and theorize about one's mental life in relation to the mental life of others. The understanding of other minds is conceived as a predicative, inferential, theory-like process, called ToM. Most of brain imaging studies investigating ToM (for recent reviews, see Frith and Frith, 2012, Van Overwalle, 2009) have repeatedly claimed the
The second-person approach
The fundamental relational character of human beings is at least two-folded. It can be a third-person relation, or a second-person relation, an I-you. What distinguishes these relations is not their object but the epistemic status adopted by the I. The second-person approach (also known as second-person perspective, see Schieber et al. 2013) differs from third-person approach because it defines a radically different and deflationary epistemic approach to the problem of other minds, by
Conclusion
The neuroscientific results triggered by the discovery of MNs highlight the role played by the motor system in providing the building blocks upon which more sophisticated social cognitive abilities can be built. The relational character of behavior as it is mapped by the cortical motor system enables a direct appreciation of purpose without relying on explicit propositional inference. Is this behavior reading, mindreading, or neither? I leave it to the reader to decide.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Marie-Curie Initial Training Network, “TESIS: Towards an Embodied Science of InterSubjectivity” (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN, 264828).
References (14)
- et al.
Neuronal activity of the anterior cingulate cortex during an observation-based decision making task in monkeys
Behavioural Brain Research
(2012) - et al.
What is so special with embodied simulation
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
(2011) - et al.
Single-neuron responses in humans during execution and observation of actions
Current Biology
(2010) - et al.
Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the understanding and imitation of action
Nature Review of Neuroscience
(2001) - et al.
M1 corticospinal mirror neurons and their role in movement suppression during action observation
Current Biology
(Feb 4 2013) - et al.
The impact of extensive medial frontal lobe damage on ‘Theory of Mind’ and cognition
Brain
(2004) - et al.
Mechanisms of social cognition
Annual Review of Psychology
(2012)
Cited by (41)
Only an inkblot? A literature review of the neural correlates of the Rorschach inkblot test
2023, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral ReviewsInterpersonal brain synchronization with instructor compensates for learner's sleep deprivation in interactive learning
2021, Biochemical PharmacologyCitation Excerpt :We here highlight three possible functional meanings of the IFC. First, the IFC is viewed as an important hub of the mirror neurons system [80], proposed to promote social interaction by predicting other individuals’ actions and intentions [81]. Thus, interactive learning could have been facilitated by the mutual abilities to infer and understand each other’s behaviour (i.e., high-level mentalizing [82]).
Measuring empathy: A statistical physics grounded approach
2019, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its ApplicationsPrecuneus-related regional and network functional deficits in social anxiety disorder: A resting-state functional MRI study
2018, Comprehensive PsychiatryCitation Excerpt :Mirror neurons are comprehensively distributed in the two regions, and they are involved in “mirroring” the behavior of other people, as though the observer was performing the action [73]. Many scholars have shown that mirror neurons may be important for understanding the actions of other people, learning new behaviors by imitation, and simulating observed actions, thought processes and other sophisticated human behavior [74–77]. Our research found that the association between SAD and abnormal activation in brain regions is related to the mirror neuron system, and this finding may have important implications for understanding the symptoms and neuropathology of SAD.
Neural bases of action abstraction
2017, Biological PsychologyCitation Excerpt :Some researchers theorize that actions are processed by engaging our own sensorimotor networks—in other words, that we understand actions by vicariously simulating perceptual, sensory, and motor states associated with an action (Barsalou, 2008; Gallese & Sinigaglia, 2011; Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2010). This view is closely tied to the mirror neuron theory of embodied action understanding (Gallese, 2013; Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2010) according to which similar neural systems are active whether an action is observed or performed. Other theories of action understanding hold that action simulation is not a primary mode of action understanding, but rather that actions are processed cognitively—i.e., that they are categorized and accessed without reliance on the motor system (Wurm, Ariani, Greenlee, & Lingnau, 2015; Wurm & Lingnau, 2015).