Neural mirroring mechanisms and imitation in human infants

Abstract

Studying human infants will increase our understanding of the nature, origins and function of neural mirroring mechanisms. Human infants are prolific imitators. Infant imitation indicates observation-execution linkages in the brain prior to language and protracted learning. Investigations of neural aspects of these linkages in human infants have focused on the sensorimotor mu rhythm in the electroencephalogram, which occurs in the alpha frequency range over central electrode sites. Recent results show that the infant mu rhythm is desynchronized during action execution as well as action observation. Current work is elucidating properties of the infant mu rhythm and how it may relate to prelinguistic action processing and social understanding. Here, we consider this neuroscience research in relation to developmental psychological theory, particularly the 'Like-Me' framework, which holds that one of the chief cognitive tasks of the human infant is to map the similarity between self and other. We elucidate the value of integrating neuroscience findings with behavioural studies of infant imitation, and the reciprocal benefit of examining mirroring mechanisms from an ontogenetic perspective.

Neural body maps in human infants: Somatotopic responses to tactile stimulation in 7-month-olds

“…First, while the mu rhythm likely reflects the combination of activity from various sources across the sensorimotor region, one likely salient contribution is activity in primary somatosensory cortex (Arnstein et al, 2011;Hari and Salmelin, 1997;Ritter et al, 2009). Second, in prior work we found that infants' visual observation of hand and foot actions was also associated with a somatotopic pattern of mu rhythm desynchronization , which is consistent with theories proposing that body representations may be involved in infants' registration of cross-modal correspondences between self and other (Marshall and Meltzoff, 2014;Meltzoff, 2007). The present finding of an effector-specific response to somatosensory stimulation suggests that SEPs may be another useful tool (in addition to the mu rhythm) for studying self-other mapping in young infants.…”

Infants’ brain responses to speech suggest Analysis by Synthesis

“…Theories of social understanding in adults (32) and infants (78) suggest that humans evolved brain mechanisms to detect and interpret humans' actions, behaviors, movements, and sounds. The present data contribute to these views by demonstrating that auditory speech activates motor areas in the infant brain.…”

Mirror neuron research: the past and the future

“…We gave ample space in this special issue to this topic [18][19][20][21][22]. It is highly debated whether the mirror system arose as the consequence of association learning or an evolutionary process that endowed a population of neurons with a mechanism necessary for accomplishing a specific function [20,23].…”