Mirror neurons are defined as neurons in the monkey cortex which respond to goal oriented actions, whether the behavior is self-generated or produced by another. Here we briefly review this literature and consider evidence from behavioral, neuropsychological, and brain imaging studies for a similar mirror neuron system in humans. Furthermore, we review functions of this system related to action...

INTRODUCTION Patients with schizophrenia commonly exhibit deficits of non-verbal communication in social contexts, which may be related to cognitive dysfunction that impairs recognition of biological motion. Although perception of biological motion is known to be mediated by the mirror neuron system, there have been few empirical studies of this system in patients with schizophrenia. METHODS ...

Mirror neurons and canonical neurons are two classes of visuomotor neurons that are activated by different visual stimuli (Rizzolatti and Kalaska, 2012). Mirror neurons respond to a biological effector interacting with an object (Gallese et al., 1996), suggesting their role in action recognition, while canonical neurons respond to the presentation of a graspable object (Murata et al., 1997), an...

In our day-to-day lives we are constantly exposed to the actions of other individuals who inhabit the social world. We not only experience their behavior, understand its contents and anticipate their consequences, but also we can do much more than that: we can attribute intentions to others and recognize immediately if their behavior is the result of an objective and a deliberative attitude or ...

The associative sequence learning (ASL) hypothesis suggests that sensorimotor experience plays an inductive role in the development of the mirror neuron system, and that it can play this crucial role because its effects are mediated by learning that is sensitive to both contingency and contiguity. The Hebbian hypothesis proposes that sensorimotor experience plays a facilitative role, and that i...

It is not known whether the mirror-neuron system is modulated by motivation, such as hunger. In this study, 2 groups of healthy participants underwent 2 functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning sessions separated by 1.5 h interval. During each session, participants were presented with video clips of another person grasping objects or grasping food. The first session was conducted after pa...

Here, we report the properties of neurons with mirror-like characteristics that were identified as pyramidal tract neurons (PTNs) and recorded in the ventral premotor cortex (area F5) and primary motor cortex (M1) of three macaque monkeys. We analysed the neurons' discharge while the monkeys performed active grasp of either food or an object, and also while they observed an experimenter carryin...

Neurophysiology reveals the properties of individual mirror neurons in the macaque while brain imaging reveals the presence of 'mirror systems' (not individual neurons) in the human. Current conceptual models attribute high level functions such as action understanding, imitation, and language to mirror neurons. However, only the first of these three functions is well-developed in monkeys. We th...