Mirror Neurons: Past, Present, and Future
With: Giacomo Rizzolatti, Professor Emeritus of Human Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Parma, Italy. Director of the Brain Center for Social and Motor Cognition Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, IIT Parma.
Mirror mechanism is a basic mechanism that transforms sensory representations into a motor format. In the first part of my talk I will describe the functions of the mirror mechanism that is located in the parietofontal network of the macaque monkey. I will present then human data on the same network discussing the specific way in which the mirror mechanism enables us to understand others. This mechanism mediates what, with Corrado Sinigaglia, I named “understanding others from inside”. In the third part of my talk I will discuss the role of the mirror mechanism in understanding the basic Darwinian emotions and the subtle emotional states that Daniel Stern called “vitality forms”. I will conclude discussing the link between the motor system, including the mirror system, and autistic spectrum disorder.