(Mis)understanding mirror neurons

What and how do they eat? Most species are thought to be carnivorous grazers, feeding on sponges, cnidaria or even molluscs. Abyssal pycnogonids have been observed in association with anemones at whale-and wood-fall sites on the sea bed (Figure 2). They can both walk and swim, although walking is extremely slow. Some species 'swim' by tucking up their legs and allowing themselves to sink rapidly, others beat their legs. Tidal species can sense changes in water pressure and alternate between swimming and walking accordingly. Because they do not have a planktonic larval phase, they do not disperse far, although at least one shallow-water species may show seasonal migration into deeper water. When did they first appear? There are very few pycnogonids in the fossil record. The earliest apparent sea spider is a larva found among the exquisitely preserved Upper Cambrian " Orsten " deposits from around 500 million years ago. A later, adult sea spider has been found in the Silurian (425 million years ago), and others have been reported in the Devonian and the Jurassic. Some of the Devonian specimens are relatively primitive and retain a tail. What is the future? Final resolution of their phylogenetic position will require substantial amounts of morphological and DNA data from a wide range of species. This will not only resolve one of the thorniest questions in evolutionary biology, it will also open the door to functional studies of these enigmatic and bizarre animals. mode of processing, the function of which is to extract parameters that are relevant to action, and to generate the corresponding motor commands " (p. 320), as opposed to " 'semantic' analysis [which is] performed in the temporal lobe " (p.314) [3]. Thus, the meaning of objects is not coded in F5, although clearly, " the semantic system can influence the pragmatic system " (p. 320) [3] (for example, we want to reach for food not snakes). Mirror neurons were discovered within this same circuit and found to have similar sensorimotor properties [1,4]. It was even suggested that " the actions performed by other monkeys must be a very important factor in determining action selection " (p. 179) [4] and that " the [motor] vocabulary of F5 can be addressed in two ways: by objects and by events [actions] " (p. 317) [3]. Thus, the theoretical and empirical pieces were in place to interpret mirror neurons as sensorimotor association …