Where are the limits of mirror explanation? Giacomo Rizzolatti, Michael Anderson, Tom Ziemke, Laila Craighero Modarator: Włodek Duch Toruń,

Mirror neurons have been implicated in a lot of functions. Which species have the Mirror Neuron System (MNS)?

Dog understanding is similar to ours, but not exactly the same. Should we use the same concepts: pain, understanding … in all cases, projecting our understanding on other species? How far should we go in using the same concepts with species that have different brains? As MNS resonance? Should we rather use the term: octopus pain, bat’s understanding, or should we assume that implicitly? How many features do our understanding, pain, pleasure … share with a dog’s understanding, pain, pleasure … ? Do fly understand that we want to catch them? How to measure that? Understanding

Simple math and abstract concepts: many species (including birds) can count up to 7. Why understanding of some math concepts was so hard? Tens of generations to invent concept of abstract number, Irrational number story, Leibnitz problem with negative numbers …

GR/CS: in the observer’s brain MNS evokes motor activation that is alike to that which occurs during planning and effective execution of that action Wiki article, mostly taken from: Dinstein I, Thomas C, Behrmann M, Heeger DJ (2008). A mirror up to nature. Current Biology 18 (1) R13–8. doi: /j.cub MNS might be very important in imitation and language acquisition. MNS has been implicated in understanding the actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation. Some researchers also speculate that mirror systems may simulate observed actions, and thus contribute to theory of mind skills, while others relate mirror neurons to language abilities. However, despite the excitement generated by these findings, to date no widely accepted neural or computational models have been put forward to describe how mirror neuron activity supports cognitive functions such as imitation.

Recent experiments suggest that infant macaques can imitate a human's face movements, though only as neonates and during a limited temporal window. However, it is not known if mirror neurons underlie this behavior. Ferrari, P. F.; Visalberghi, E.; Paukner, A.; Fogassi, L.; Ruggiero, A. (2006), et al., "Neonatal Imitation in Rhesus Macaques", PLoS Biology 4 (9): e302, doi: / Nobody has ever reported that an interruption of the motor areas in F5 would produce a decrement in action recognition. Wikipedia: The function of mirror neurons in macaques is not known. Adult macaques do not seem to learn by imitation.

Rizzolatti G., Arbib M.A. Language within our grasp. Trends in Neurosciences, 21(1998), Understanding as pre-linguistic grammar, syntactical coding. Hauser, M.D., Chomsky, N. & Fitch, W.T. (2002). The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science. 298: “We further argue that narrow faculty of language (may have evolved for reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (for example, number, navigation, and social relations).” Marc D. Hauser: Evolving conceptions of the faculty of language (2010) “Sometimes I think that the state of play in the study of language evolution is doomed to endless obfuscation, obscurantism, and opacity! … I only had one recourse: find the nearest pub and drink heavily.”

Brass M, Schmitt RM, Spengler S, Gergely G. Investigating action understanding: inferential processes versus action simulation. Curr Biol Dec 18;17(24): Simulation theory assumes that we understand actions by simulating the observed behavior through a direct matching process that activates the mirror-neuron circuit. The alternative interpretive account assumes that action understanding is based on specialized inferential processes activating brain areas with no mirror properties. Contextual information in specifying action intentions differs in these two approaches in significant respects. Participants observed an unusual action in implausible versus plausible contexts … brain areas that are part of a network involved in inferential interpretive processes of rationalization and mentalization but that lack mirror properties are more active when the action occurs in an implausible context. However, no differential activation was found in the mirror network. Our findings support the assumption that action understanding in novel situations is primarily mediated by an inferential interpretive system rather than the mirror system.

Hauser M, Wood J. Evolving the capacity to understand actions, intentions, and goals. Annual Review of Psychology 2010;61:303-24, C1. We synthesize the contrasting predictions of motor simulation and teleological theories of action comprehension and present evidence from a series of studies showing that monkeys and apes-like humans-extract the meaning of an event by (a) going beyond the surface appearance of actions, attributing goals and intentions to the agent; (b) using details about the environment to infer when an action is rational or irrational; (c) making predictions about an agent's goal and the most probable action to obtain the goal, within the constraints of the situation; (d) predicting the most probable outcome of actions even when they are physiologically incapable of producing the actions; and (e) combining information about means and outcomes to make decisions about social interactions, some with moral relevance. These studies reveal the limitations of motor simulation theories, especially those that rely on the notion of direct matching and mirror neuron activation. They provide support, however, for a teleological theory, rooted in an inferential process that extracts information about action means, potential goals, and the environmental constraints that limit rational action.

Kilner JM, Frith CD, Action observation: inferring intentions without mirror neurons. Curr Biol Jan 8;18(1):R32-3. A recent study has shown, using fMRI, that the mirror neuron system does not mediate action understanding when the observed action is novel or when it is hard to understand. Are mirror neurons really form a distinct class of cells, as opposed to an occasional phenomenon seen in cells that have other functions? Pascolo PB, Ragogna R, Rossi R, (2009). The Mirror-Neuron System Paradigm and its consistency. Gait Posture 30 (Suppl. 1): 65 So, can we clearly distinguish the Mirror Neuron System (MNS) from the activity of multimodal neurons?

G. Hickok, Eight problems for the mirror neuron theory of action understanding in monkeys and humans. J. Cog Neurosci, 2009, 21, There is no evidence in monkeys that mirror neurons support action understanding. Action understanding can be achieved via non-mirror neuron mechanisms. The primary motor cortex (M1) contains mirror neurons. The relation between macaque mirror neurons and the “mirror system” in humans is either non-parallel or undetermined. Action understanding in humans dissociates from neurophysiological indices of the human “mirror system.” Action understanding and action production dissociate. Damage to the inferior frontal gyrus is not correlated with action understanding deficits. Generalization of the mirror system to speech recognition fails on empirical grounds.