Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language

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Maxim I. Stamenov, Vittorio Gallese
John Benjamins Publishing, Dec 17, 2002 - Psychology - 392 pages
The emergence of language, social intelligence, and tool development are what made homo sapiens sapiens differentiate itself from all other biological species in the world. The use of language and the management of social and instrumental skills imply an awareness of intention and the consideration that one faces another individual with an attitude analogical to that of one’s own. The metaphor of ‘mirror’ aptly comes to mind.Recent investigations have shown that the human ability to ‘mirror’ other’s actions originates in the brain at a much deeper level than phenomenal awareness. A new class of neurons has been discovered in the premotor area of the monkey brain: ‘mirror neurons’. Quite remarkably, they are tuned to fire to the enaction as well as observation of specific classes of behavior: fine manual actions and actions performed by mouth. They become activated independent of the agent, be it the self or a third person whose action is observed. The activation in mirror neurons is automatic and binds the observation and enaction of some behavior by the self or by the observed other. The peculiar first-to-third-person ‘intersubjectivity’ of the performance of mirror neurons and their surprising complementarity to the functioning of strategic communicative face-to-face (first-to-second person) interaction may shed new light on the functional architecture of conscious vs. unconscious mental processes and the relationship between behavioral and communicative action in monkeys, primates, and humans.
The present volume discusses the nature of mirror neurons as presented by the research team of Prof. Giacomo Rizzolatti (University of Parma), who originally discovered them, and the implications to our understanding of the evolution of brain, mind and communicative interaction in non-human primates and man.(Series B)

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Contents

Mirror neurons vocal imitation and the evolution of particulate speech
Constitutive features of human dialogic interaction Mirror neurons and what they tell us about human abilities
Some features that make mirror neurons and human language faculty unique
Altercentric perception by infants and adults in dialogue Egos virtual participation in Alters complementary act
Visual attention and selfgrooming behaviors among fourmonthold infants Indirect evidence pointing to a developmental role for mirror neurons
The role of mirror neurons in the ontogeny of speech
Mirror neurons registration of biological motion A resource for evolution of communication and cognitivelinguistic meaning
Looking for neural answers to linguistic questions

The role of objects in imitation
The mirror system and joint action
Brain activation to passive observation of grasping actions
Mirror neurons and the self construct
Behavioral synchronization in human conversational interaction
Symmetry building and symmetry breaking in synchronized movement
Mirror neurons system and the evolutionof brain communication and language
On the evolutionary origin of language
Mirror neurons and cultural transmission
Applications
Mirror neurons and the neural basis for learning by imitation Computational modeling
Mirror neurons and feedback learning
A connectionist model which unifies the behavioral and the linguistic processes Results from robot learning experiments
Name index
Subject index
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