Transcript Mind from brain: physics & neuroscience

Where are the limits of
mirror explanation?
Giacomo Rizzolatti, Michael Anderson,
Tom Ziemke, Laila Craighero
Modarator: Włodek Duch
Toruń, 15.04.2010
Mirror neurons have been implicated in a lot of functions.
Which species have the Mirror Neuron System (MNS)?
Understanding
Dog understanding is similar to ours, but not exactly the same.
• Should we use the same concepts: pain, understanding … in
all cases, projecting our understanding on other species?
• How far should we go in using the same concepts with
species that have different brains? As MNS resonance?
• Should we rather use the term: octopus pain, bat’s
understanding, or should we assume that implicitly?
• How many features do our understanding, pain, pleasure …
share with a dog’s understanding, pain, pleasure … ?
• Do fly understand that we want to catch them?
• How to measure that?
Simple math and abstract concepts:
many species (including birds) can count up to 7.
Why understanding of some math concepts was so hard?
Tens of generations to invent concept of abstract number,
Irrational number story, Leibnitz problem with negative numbers …
GR/CS: in the observer’s brain MNS evokes motor activation that is alike to
that which occurs during planning and effective execution of that action
Wiki article, mostly taken from:
Dinstein I, Thomas C, Behrmann M, Heeger DJ (2008). A mirror up to nature.
Current Biology 18 (1) R13–8. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.01.044
MNS might be very important in imitation and language acquisition.
MNS has been implicated in understanding the actions of other people, and
for learning new skills by imitation. Some researchers also speculate that
mirror systems may simulate observed actions, and thus contribute to theory
of mind skills, while others relate mirror neurons to language abilities.
However, despite the excitement generated by these findings, to date no
widely accepted neural or computational models have been put forward to
describe how mirror neuron activity supports cognitive functions such as
imitation.
Wikipedia:
The function of mirror neurons in macaques is not
known.
Adult macaques do not seem to learn by imitation.
Recent experiments suggest that infant macaques can imitate a human's face
movements, though only as neonates and during a limited temporal window.
However, it is not known if mirror neurons underlie this behavior.
Ferrari, P. F.; Visalberghi, E.; Paukner, A.; Fogassi, L.; Ruggiero, A. (2006), et
al., "Neonatal Imitation in Rhesus Macaques", PLoS Biology 4 (9): e302,
doi:10.1371/
Nobody has ever reported that an interruption of the motor areas in F5
would produce a decrement in action recognition.
Rizzolatti G., Arbib M.A. Language within our grasp.
Trends in Neurosciences, 21(1998), 188-194.
Understanding as pre-linguistic grammar, syntactical coding.
Hauser, M.D., Chomsky, N. & Fitch, W.T. (2002). The faculty of language:
what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science. 298:1569-1579.
“We further argue that narrow faculty of language (may have evolved for
reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look for
evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (for
example, number, navigation, and social relations).”
Marc D. Hauser:
Evolving conceptions of the faculty of language (2010)
“Sometimes I think that the state of play in the study of language evolution is
doomed to endless obfuscation, obscurantism, and opacity!
… I only had one recourse: find the nearest pub and drink heavily.”
Brass M, Schmitt RM, Spengler S, Gergely G.
Investigating action understanding: inferential processes versus action
simulation. Curr Biol. 2007 Dec 18;17(24):2117-21.
Simulation theory assumes that we understand actions by simulating the
observed behavior through a direct matching process that activates the
mirror-neuron circuit. The alternative interpretive account assumes that
action understanding is based on specialized inferential processes activating
brain areas with no mirror properties. Contextual information in specifying
action intentions differs in these two approaches in significant respects.
Participants observed an unusual action in implausible versus plausible
contexts … brain areas that are part of a network involved in inferential
interpretive processes of rationalization and mentalization but that lack
mirror properties are more active when the action occurs in an implausible
context. However, no differential activation was found in the mirror network.
Our findings support the assumption that action understanding in novel
situations is primarily mediated by an inferential interpretive system rather
than the mirror system.
Hauser M, Wood J.
Evolving the capacity to understand actions, intentions, and goals.
Annual Review of Psychology 2010;61:303-24, C1.
We synthesize the contrasting predictions of motor simulation and
teleological theories of action comprehension and present evidence from a
series of studies showing that monkeys and apes-like humans-extract the
meaning of an event by (a) going beyond the surface appearance of actions,
attributing goals and intentions to the agent; (b) using details about the
environment to infer when an action is rational or irrational; (c) making
predictions about an agent's goal and the most probable action to obtain the
goal, within the constraints of the situation; (d) predicting the most probable
outcome of actions even when they are physiologically incapable of
producing the actions; and (e) combining information about means and
outcomes to make decisions about social interactions, some with moral
relevance. These studies reveal the limitations of motor simulation theories,
especially those that rely on the notion of direct matching and mirror neuron
activation. They provide support, however, for a teleological theory, rooted
in an inferential process that extracts information about action means,
potential goals, and the environmental constraints that limit rational action.
Kilner JM, Frith CD, Action observation: inferring intentions without mirror
neurons. Curr Biol. 2008 Jan 8;18(1):R32-3.
A recent study has shown, using fMRI, that the mirror neuron system does
not mediate action understanding when the observed action is novel or when
it is hard to understand.
Are mirror neurons really form a distinct class of cells, as opposed
to an occasional phenomenon seen in cells that have other functions?
Pascolo PB, Ragogna R, Rossi R, (2009). The Mirror-Neuron System Paradigm
and its consistency. Gait Posture 30 (Suppl. 1): 65
So, can we clearly distinguish the Mirror Neuron System (MNS) from the
activity of multimodal neurons?
G. Hickok, Eight problems for the mirror neuron theory of action
understanding in monkeys and humans.
J. Cog Neurosci, 2009, 21, 1229-1243.
• There is no evidence in monkeys that mirror neurons support action
understanding.
• Action understanding can be achieved via non-mirror neuron
mechanisms.
• The primary motor cortex (M1) contains mirror neurons.
• The relation between macaque mirror neurons and the “mirror system” in
humans is either non-parallel or undetermined.
• Action understanding in humans dissociates from neurophysiological
indices of the human “mirror system.”
• Action understanding and action production dissociate.
• Damage to the inferior frontal gyrus is not correlated with action
understanding deficits.
• Generalization of the mirror system to speech recognition fails on
empirical grounds.