In primates, ventral premotor and rostral inferior parietal neurons fire during the execution of hand and mouth actions. Some cells (called mirror neurons) also fire when hand and mouth actions are just observed. Mirror neurons provide a simple neural mechanism for understanding the actions of others. In humans, posterior inferior frontal and rostral inferior parietal areas have mirror properti...

To assess the relationship between the mirror-neuron system (MNS), an observation-execution matching system, and handedness, we acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging from 11 right-handed (RH) and eight left-handed (LH) subjects to identify regions involved in processing action (execution and observation) of the right and left upper limbs. During the execution tasks, LH subjects had a m...

Following a classical perspective, acquiring a new motor skill implies moving from a declarative knowledge of the motor task to be learned to a procedural knowledge of it. Some recent research on the motor system challenges this view. In the ventral premotor cortex of a monkey, neurons have been discovered that discharge both when an animal executes a specific goal-directed action (i.e. graspin...

BACKGROUND Mirror neurons have been localized in several locations, including the inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Increase of EEG alpha3/alpha2 frequency power ratio has been detected in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subjects who will convert in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We investigated the association of alpha3/alpha2 frequency power ratio with cortical thickness in IPL in MCI subjects. ME...

Different treatments for stroke patients have been proposed; among them the mirror therapy and motion imagery lead to functional recovery by providing a cortical reorganization. Up today the basic concepts of the current literature on mirror neurons and the major findings regarding the use of mirror therapy and motor imagery as potential tools to promote reorganization and functional recovery i...

It has been suggested that the mirror neuron system (MNS) enables the understanding of others’ intentions by simply observing their actions. As Lepage and Théoret’s paper highlights, while the MNS has been extensively studied in adult humans and in monkeys, very little is known about its development. What properties of the MNS change during development, or even when in development a functioning...

Specific Aims: Empathy, the ability to feel and understand another’s pain, pleasure, and feelings is vital to surviving the social circus of everyday life. The idea of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is at the core of human relationships. Empathy is why charity is possible, why people go out of their way to selflessly help others in need, or why people can connect with each other on an...

BACKGROUND Hypoactivation of the inferior frontal gyrus during the perception of facial expressions has been interpreted as evidence for a deficit of the mirror neuron system in children with autism. We examined whether this dysfunction persists in adulthood, and how brain activity in the mirror neuron system relates to social functioning outside the laboratory. METHODS Twenty-one adult males...

Mirror neuron system (MNS) represents one of the most important discoveries in the area of neuropsychology of past decades. More than 500 papers have been published in this area (PubMed), and the major functions of MNS include action understanding, imitation, empathy, all of which are critical for an individual to be social. Recent studies suggested that MNS can modulate emotion states possibly...

The notion of a frontoparietal human mirror neuron system (HMNS) has been used to explain a range of social phenomena. However, most human neuroimaging studies of this system do not address critical 'mirror' properties: neural representations should be action specific and should generalise across visual and motor modalities. Studies using repetition suppression (RS) and, particularly, multivari...