Mirror Units
From Brass & Heyes (2005)
P489
‘Mirror neurons in the premotor area F5 of monkeys are active both when the animal observes and when it executes a specific action (for a review see [52,53]. The discovery of these cells has had a revolutionary impact, turning perception–action interaction into a focus of intensive, interdisciplinary research worldwide. Naturally there has been a great deal of speculation about the function of mirror neurons, including proposals that they mediate, not only imitation, but also action understanding, empathy, language development [54,55], and action simulation [56]. However, at present, direct experimental evidence for the involvement of mirror neurons
in one or all these functions is relatively weak.
Progress in research on the function of mirror neurons might have been hampered by a failure to distinguish clearly between two questions: What do they do?, What are they for? Imitation might well be one of the things that mirror neurons do; under some conditions, in some species, mirror neurons could be involved in the generation of imitative behaviour. However, mirror neurons could do imitation without being for imitation; they could be involved in generating imitative behaviour without imitation being the function that favoured their evolution by natural selection. In other words, imitation and other functions of mirror neurons could be exaptations rather than adaptations(57).’ Ie generalist theories would say that mirror neurons may do imitation but that they are not for imitation. ‘the properties of mirror neurons are not innate, and the learning and action-control processes that lead to their formation evolved in response to much more general adaptive problems.’ No empirical evidence as to whether mirror units are present at birth.’
Note claims that monkeys do not imitate evidence that is supportive of generalist theories.
