Grasping the Intentions of Others with One's Own Mirror Neuron System

By Marco Iacoboni, Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, Vittorio Gallese †, Giovanni Buccino, John C. Mazziotta, Giacomo Rizzolatti. PLoS Biology, 2005

1,958 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Understanding the intentions of others while watching their actions is a fundamental building block of social behavior. The neural and functional mechanisms underlying this ability are still poorly understood. To investigate these mechanisms we used functional magnetic resonance imaging. Twenty-three subjects watched three kinds of stimuli: grasping hand actions without a context, context only (scenes containing objects), and grasping hand actions performed in two different contexts. In the latter condition the context suggested the intention associated with the grasping action (either drinking or cleaning). Actions embedded in contexts, compared with the other two conditions, yielded a significant signal increase in the posterior part of the inferior frontal gyrus and the adjacent sector of the ventral premotor cortex where hand actions are represented. Thus, premotor mirror neuron areas—areas active during the execution and the observation of an action—previously thought to be involved only in action recognition are actually also involved in understanding the intentions of others. To ascribe an intention is to infer a forthcoming new goal, and this is an operation that the motor system does automatically.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dd570f76697deaa6d9c64df293c6183606da696d

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Citations in the corpus

Investigating action understanding: inferential processes versus action simulation. (2007, methodology): “Recent fMRI and TMS research indicates that areas assumed to constitute the human mirror system (inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal cortex) are involved in tasks requiring action understanding [6, 14].”
Inference or interaction: social cognition without precursors (2008, background): “…acting individual, and therefore a form of mind-reading, is suggested by research that shows mirror neurons discriminate identical movements according to the intentional action and contexts in which these movements are embedded (Fogassi et al. 2005; Iacoboni et al. 2005; Kaplan and Iacoboni 2006).”
Are there theory of mind regions in the brain? A review of the neuroimaging literature (2009, background): “In particular, mirror neurons have been associated with the comprehension of action goals [e.g. Fogassi et al., 2005; Iacoboni et al., 2005] and imitation [e.g. Iacoboni et al., 1999; Rizzolatti et al., 2001], both of which are thought to be an important stage in the subsequent development of ToM.”
Empathy constrained: Prejudice predicts reduced mental simulation of actions during observation of outgroups. (2010, neutral): “Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Social Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate / jesp understanding (e.g. Iacoboni et al., 2005; Oberman, Pineda, & Ramachandran, 2006).”
The Origins of 12-Month Attachment: A Microanalysis of 4-Month Mother-Infant Interaction (2010, background): “Mirror neurons provide an “action-recognition” mechanism: the actor's actions are reproduced in the premotor cortex of the observer (Iacoboni, Molnar-Szakacs, Gallese, Buccino, Mazziotta, & Rizzolatti, 2005 ; Rizzolatti, Fadiga, Fogassi, & Gallese, 1996 ).”
Empathy, Sympathy, and Pity: 21st-Century Definitions and Implications for Practice and Research (2011, background): “Primarily through the use of brain imaging techniques, social-cognitive neuroscience researchers have been investigating the interpersonal biology of empathy: how human minds communicate directly through “neural resonance, mirroring, and empathy” (Young, 2010, p. 6; see also T. Gallese, Fadiga, Foga”
ALE meta-analysis of action observation and imitation in the human brain (2010, neutral): “Other studies, however, reported a dominance of left hemispheric areas during imitation tasks, which was interpreted in reference to the lateralisation of language functions (e.g., Aziz-Zadeh et al., 2004; Rizzolatti and Arbib, 1998; Iacoboni et al., 2005).”
Action Representation of Sound: Audiomotor Recognition Network While Listening to Newly Acquired Actions (2007, background): “, 2003), supramodal sequence predictor (Maess et al., 2001; Kilner et al., 2004; Iacoboni et al., 2005), and internal simulator (Platel et al.”
The musical art of infant conversation: Narrating in the time of sympathetic experience, without rational interpretation, before words (2008, background): “The infant’s abilities also have importance for brain science, which is gaining new sophistication in the appreciation of intentional processes and their sympathetic transmission between actors (Gallese & Lakoff, 2005; Iacoboni et al., 2005; Rizzolatti et al., 2006).”
Principles of Learning, Implications for Teaching: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective. (2008, background): “For example, there appear to be specialised neural structures in the human brain for encoding information about agents and their goal-directed actions (the so-called mirror neuron system—see for example Iacoboni et al., 2005).”
Dark, Beyond Deep: A Paradigm Shift to Cognitive AI with Humanlike Common Sense (2020, background): “Accumulating neurophysiological evidence supports such simulations in the human brain; one example is the mirror neuron [331], which has been linked to intent understanding in many studies [102,332].”
Mirroring others' emotions relates to empathy and interpersonal competence in children (2008, background): “, 2004), and intention understanding (Iacoboni et al., 2005).”
Gender differences in brain networks supporting empathy (2008, background): “These assumptions are in line with behavioral and neuroimaging evidence for the involvement of mirror neuron mechanisms in social interactions, for example, the detection of emotional states (Carr et al., 2003), intentions (Iacoboni et al., 2005), and the emergence of empathy (Gallese, 2003).”
Mirror Neurons, Embodied Simulation, and the Neural Basis of Social Identification (2009, background): “The MNS in humans is directly involved in imitation of simple movements (Iacoboni et al., 1999), imitation learning of complex skills (Buccino et al., 2004a), in the perception of communicative actions (Buccino et al., 2004b), and in the detection of action intentions ( Iacoboni et al., 2005 ).”