Mirror phenomena are behavioral and neurophysiological reactions to social stimuli in which the stimulus and the response match or correspond; they share distinctive features. For example, observation of face-touching and foot-wagging elicit similar, overt behaviors from the observer (Chartrand and Bargh, 1999); observation of arm and hand movements selectively enhance motor-evoked potentials f...

Unintentional movement "overflow" between the hands or "mirror movements" are common in young children, but are generally regarded as indicative of developmental delay in older children. This study was designed to investigate mirror movements in a sample of 23 very poor readers, ages 11-13, with learning disabilities, and in a control group of 48 normal readers, matched for age, sex, and handed...

In this study we investigated the effects of a mirror-mediated, partial view of one's dance partner on interpersonal coordination in dance duets. Fourteen participant pairs (dyads) were asked to perform a reflectionally-symmetric eight-segment dance-relevant arm movement sequence in two visual conditions: with one dancer facing the mirror and providing a partial view on the dance partner, or bo...

Both motor imagery and mirror training have been used in motor rehabilitation settings to promote skill learning and plasticity. As motor imagery and mirror training are suggested to be closely linked, it was hypothesized that mirror training augmented by motor imagery would increase corticospinal excitability (CSE) significantly compared to mirror training alone. Forty-four participants were s...

A Bayesian kinesthetic-visual matching model allows a humanoid robot to perform mirror self-recognition without social understanding. The robot learns the relationship between its own motor activity and perceived motion by observing the movements of its arm for four minutes. Over this time, it builds a simple dynamic Bayesian model that relates these two events, and uses this self model to buil...

Speech-associated gestures are hand and arm movements that not only convey semantic information to listeners but are themselves actions. Broca's area has been assumed to play an important role both in semantic retrieval or selection (as part of a language comprehension system) and in action recognition (as part of a "mirror" or "observation-execution matching" system). We asked whether the role...

A new method is presented for physically measuring drivers’ field of view in rearview mirrors. A portable coordinate measurement apparatus (FARO Arm) is used to measure the mirror locations, contours, and curvature. Measurements of the driver’s head and eye locations while looking into each mirror are also made. Raytracing is used to map the twoor three-dimensional field of view in each mirror....

Emergent interactions that are expressed by the movements of two agents are discussed in this paper. The common coding principle is used to show how the mirror neuron system may facilitate interaction behaviour. Synchronization between neuron groups in different structures of the mirror neuron system are in the basis of the interaction behaviour. The robotics experimental setting is used to ill...

It has been proposed that actions are intrinsically linked to perception and that imagining, observing, preparing, or in any way representing an action excites the motor programs used to execute that same action. There is neurophysiological evidence that certain brain regions involved in executing actions are activated by the mere observation of action (the so-called "mirror system;" ). However...