How Do We Understand the Actions of Others? by Mental Simulation, Not Mirroring

Assigning meaning to the actions of other subjects is an essential aspect of everyday social communication. A major contribution in understanding the brain mechanism supporting recognition of others’ actions was the discovery of ‘mirror neurons’, which are activated both when a monkey grasps an object and when he observes other subjects executing the same grasps. However, our recent findings indicate that the system responsible for understanding the actions of other subjects encompasses the entire brain circuitry that supports action execution, rather than just the part of cortex containing ‘mirror neurons’. These findings contradict the widely held notion 99 How Do we unDerstanD tHe actions of otHers? that ‘mirror neurons’ alone code the meaning of observed actions performed by other subjects, and instead support the theory that we decode others’ actions by activating our own action system, i.e. by mentally simulating the observed acts.