X-Message-Number: 11385
Date: Sun, 07 Mar 1999 19:57:42 -0500
From: Jan Coetzee <>
Subject: "Mind reading"??

I don't know the source.

J.C.
================

A new class of visuomotor neuron has been recently discovered in the
monkey's premotor cortex: mirror neurons. These neurons respond both
when a
particular action is performed by the recorded monkey and when the same
action, performed by another individual, is observed. Mirror neurons
appear
to form a cortical system matching observation and execution of
goal-related
motor actions. Experimental evidence suggests that a similar matching
system
also exists in humans. What might be the functional role of this
matching
system? One possible function is to enable an organism to detect certain

mental states of observed conspecifics. This function might be part of,
or
a
precursor to, a more general mind-reading ability. Two different
accounts
of
mind-reading have been suggested. According to `theory theory', mental
states are represented as inferred posits of a naive theory. According
to
`simulation theory', other people's mental states are represented by
adopting their perspective: by tracking or matching their states with
resonant states of one's own. The activity of mirror neurons, and the
fact
that observers undergo motor facilitation in the same muscular groups as

those utilized by target agents, are findings that accord well with
simulation theory but would not be predicted by theory theory.

How do we understand other people's behavior? How can we assign goals,
intentions, or beliefs to the inhabitants of our social world? A
possible
way to answer these challenging questions is to adopt an evolutionary
frame
of reference, both in phylogenetical and ontogenetical terms, envisaging

these `mind-reading' capacities as rooted in antecedent, more `ancient'
and
simple mechanisms. This approach can capitalize on the results of
different
fields of investigation: neurophysiology can investigate the neural
correlates of precursors of these mechanisms in lower species of social
primates such as macaque monkeys. Developmental psychology can study how

the
capacity to attribute propositional attitudes to others develops.

In the present article we will propose that humans' mind-reading
abilities
rely on the capacity to adopt a simulation routine. This capacity might
have
evolved from an action execution/observation matching system whose
neural
correlate is represented by a class of neurons recently discovered in
the
macaque monkey premotor cortex: mirror neurons (MNs).
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