ESRC Conference on Diversity in Macroeconomics
University of Essex
Colchester, 25 February 2014
Mirror neurons &
Embodied Simulation
theory of Social
Cognition
Vittorio Gallese
Dept. of Neuroscience
University of Parma
Italy
How do we give sense
to the natural evidence
of the world of others?
?
A bottom-up
approach
to social cognition
Mirror
Neurons
Mirror neurons discharge at the moment of motor
goal accomplishment
Population analysis MNs
(Rochat et al., submitted)
• MNs
discharge
during
the
accomplishment of the motor goal,
regardless of the movements employed.
• MNs discharge significantly more during
action execution than during its
observation.
Mirror neurons in Humans
The Mirror mechanism for action in
humans
Trans. Distal mov.
Tool use
Reaching mov.
Intransitive mov.
Upper limb mov.
Mirror mechanisms in humans
The same cortical sites are activated
during execution/observation of:
•Object-directed actions
•Communicative actions
•Body movements
Three Conditions,Two groups, Two Instructions:
1) Simply watch
2) Pay attention to:
a) What kind of objects
b) What kind of grasp
c)What kind of intention
(Iacoboni, Molnar Zacks, Gallese, Buccino, Mazziotta, and Rizzolatti PLOS Biology
(Iacoboni, Molnar Zacks, Gallese, Buccino, Mazziotta, and Rizzolatti PLOS Biology 2005)
Mirror mechanisms in humans
Linguistically described actions
Tettamanti et al. J Cogn Neuroscience 2005
The same cortical sites are activated during action
performance and while listening to or reading words
or sentences describing actions.
The discovery of MNs in the
macaque monkey brain and in the
human brain suggests that a more
direct access to intentional states of
others is available.
My point
• At the basis of the capacity to understand
others’ intentional behavior – both from a
phylogenetic and ontogenetic point of view –
there is a basic functional mechanism,
embodied simulation,
which exploits the
intrinsic functional organization of the motor
system and a variety of mirror mechanisms.
The tip of the iceberg
Mirror mechanisms in humans
Other cortical sites (Insula, SI, SII, Amygdala)
are activated during experience/observation of:
•Emotions (disgust, pain)
•Sensations (touch)
The mirror mechanism
Maps the sensory representation of the action,
emotion or sensation of another onto the perceiver’s
own motor, viscero-motor or somatosensory bodilyformatted representation of that action, emotion or
sensation.
This mapping enables one to perceive the action,
emotion or sensation of another as if she were
performing that action or experiencing that emotion or
sensation herself.
• ES theory provides a unitary account of basic
aspects of social cognition, showing that people
reuse their own mental states or processes
represented with a bodily format in functionally
attributing them to others.
• MM-driven ES plays a constitutive role in basic
form of mind-reading.
• This form of mind-reading does not require
propositional attitudes, being mapped onto mental
representations with a bodily format (i.e. motor
representations of goals and intentions as well as
viscero-motor and somatosensory representations
of emotions and sensations).
We do not necessarily experience
the specific contents of others’
experiences, but experience others
as having experiences similar to
ours.
Thank You!