Programmed to learn? The ontogeny of mirror neurons

Giudice, Marco Del; Manera, Valéria; Keysers, Christian

doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00783.x

Cited by 160 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 144 publications

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“…These findings support the possibility that facial mimicry and emotion recognition develop in tandem in early infancy. When facial mimicry emerges in postnatal development, reciprocal mimicry in our social interactions and Hebbian associative learning may explain its generating mechanisms [44][45][46][47][48][49][50]. Infants spontaneously and involuntarily produce several facial expressions during their early development.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic facial mimicry in response to dynamic emotional stimuli in five-month-old infants

Isomura

Nakano

2016

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Human adults automatically mimic others' emotional expressions, which is believed to contribute to sharing emotions with others. Although this behaviour appears fundamental to social reciprocity, little is known about its developmental process. Therefore, we examined whether infants show automatic facial mimicry in response to others' emotional expressions. Facial electromyographic activity over the corrugator supercilii (brow) and zygomaticus major (cheek) of four-to five-month-old infants was measured while they viewed dynamic clips presenting audiovisual, visual and auditory emotions. The audiovisual bimodal emotion stimuli were a display of a laughing/crying facial expression with an emotionally congruent vocalization, whereas the visual/auditory unimodal emotion stimuli displayed those emotional faces/vocalizations paired with a neutral vocalization/face, respectively. Increased activation of the corrugator supercilii muscle in response to audiovisual cries and the zygomaticus major in response to audiovisual laughter were observed between 500 and 1000 ms after stimulus onset, which clearly suggests rapid facial mimicry. By contrast, both visual and auditory unimodal emotion stimuli did not activate the infants' corresponding muscles. These results revealed that automatic facial mimicry is present as early as five months of age, when multimodal emotional information is present.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic facial mimicry in response to dynamic emotional stimuli in five-month-old infants

Isomura

Nakano

2016

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…From an evolutionary point of view, it seems reasonable that there may be some innate mechanisms in place that would be facilitated through sensorimotor learning (Del Giudice et al , 2009). Indeed the MNS might inform the Sapient Paradox (Renfrew, 2008), broadly encapsulated as the 'hardware' for the human neocortex preceding any evidence for higher cognitive outputs by tens of thousands of years.…”

Section: Mirror Neuron Development and Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does dysfunction of the mirror neuron system contribute to symptoms in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?

Eisen

Lemon

Kiernan

et al. 2015

Clinical Neurophysiology

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Eisen et al, Mirror Neurons in ALS 2 Declaration of interest:The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. Eisen et al, Mirror Neurons in ALS 3 Abbreviations:ALS: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; ADM: adductor digiti minimi; APB: abductor pollicic brevis; bvFTD: Behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia; FTD: Frontotemporal dementia; fMRI: functional MRI; MNS: Mirror neuron system; M1: Primary motor cortex; PTNs: Pyramidal tract neurons; vMPFC: Ventral medial prefrontal cortex. Eisen et al, Mirror Neurons in ALS 4 AbstractThere is growing evidence that mirror neurons, initially discovered over two decades ago in the monkey, are present in the human brain. In the monkey, mirror neurons characteristically fire not only when it is performing an action, such as grasping an object, but also when observing a similar action performed by another agent (human or monkey). In this review we discuss the origin, cortical distribution and possible functions of mirror neurons as a background to exploring their potential relevance in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). We have recently proposed that ALS (and the related condition of frontotemporal dementia) may be viewed as a failure of interlinked functional complexes having their origins in key evolutionary adaptations. The mirror neuron system is considered by many to be the basis of primates' social cognition, with a clear evolutionary advantage. Impaired empathy and motor control has been related to a defective mirror neuron system. In ALS, the mirror neuron system might be implicated in empathy, the split-hand syndrome, gait, speech, and related languagegesture impairments.Eisen et al, Mirror Neurons in ALS 5

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“…17,18) that are derived from first-person production and correspond to the kinematics of specific actions in the observer's motor repertoire (8,15). By this hypothesis, visuomotor "mirror" representations-which could be innate (18,19) or built from correlated sensory and motor action input (20,21)-allow for the activation of a corresponding motor program following perception of another's action. Spreading activation from the motor plan to a representation of the action's salient visual or auditory effects then allows the observer to categorize the observed action as directed toward that effect or end state (22,23).…”

Section: The Origins Of Rational Action Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

First-person action experience reveals sensitivity to action efficiency in prereaching infants

Skerry

Carey

Spelke

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

143

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Do infants learn to interpret others' actions through their own experience producing goal-directed action, or does some knowledge of others' actions precede first-person experience? Several studies report that motor experience enhances action understanding, but the nature of this effect is not well understood. The present research investigates what is learned during early motoric production, and it tests whether knowledge of goal-directed actions, including an assumption that actors maximize efficiency given environmental constraints, exists before experience producing such actions. Three-month-old infants (who cannot yet effectively reach for and grasp objects) were given novel experience retrieving objects that rested on a surface with no barriers. They were then shown an actor reaching for an object over a barrier and tested for sensitivity to the efficiency of the action. These infants showed heightened attention when the agent reached inefficiently for a goal object; in contrast, infants who lacked successful reaching experience did not differentiate between direct and indirect reaches. Given that the infants could reach directly for objects during training and were given no opportunity to update their actions based on environmental constraints, the training experience itself is unlikely to have provided a basis for learning about action efficiency. We suggest that infants apply a general assumption of efficient action as soon as they have sufficient information (possibly derived from their own action experience) to identify an agent's goal in a given instance.A hallmark of goal-directed action is its flexibility (1). Intelligent agents draw on causal and functional knowledge to update their action plans based on the constraints and affordances of the current environment. As a result, the same goal can be achieved with various means depending on the situation, and the same movements can reflect diverse goals. This flexibility poses a nontrivial inference problem for the outside observer seeking to uncover agents' intentions and predict their future behavior.Humans nonetheless make sense of others' behavior, and do so by recruiting a "theory of mind" that relates observable actions to subjective mental states (2). This intuitive theory relies on a key assumption that agents are rational, pursuing their goals with the most efficient means possible in a given context (3, 4). By assuming that agents pursue their goals efficiently, an observer can flexibly adapt expectations about others' actions to the constraints of a given situation, and can interpret the same actions differently based on the context. This efficiency assumption thus constrains an otherwise underdetermined inference problem, providing a flexible schema for explaining and predicting action.The Origins of Rational Action Knowledge Studies with human infants suggest that this efficiency assumption is in place by the second half of the first year. When shown visual displays of an agent passing over an obstacle to approach a goal object, infants ex...

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Programmed to learn? The ontogeny of mirror neurons

Abstract: Abstract

Cited by 160 publications

References 144 publications

Automatic facial mimicry in response to dynamic emotional stimuli in five-month-old infants

Automatic facial mimicry in response to dynamic emotional stimuli in five-month-old infants

Does dysfunction of the mirror neuron system contribute to symptoms in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?

First-person action experience reveals sensitivity to action efficiency in prereaching infants

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