Embodied cognition and mirror neurons: A critical assessment

Annual Review of Neuroscience

Volumn 37, Issue , 2014, Pages 1-15

  Caramazza, Alfonso ^a,b   Anzellotti, Stefano ^a,b   Strnad, Lukas ^a   Lingnau, Angelika ^b  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF TRENTO   (Italy)

Author keywords

Action understanding; Concepts; Embodied cognition; Mirror neurons; Simulation

Indexed keywords

AUTOMATION; BEHAVIOR; BRAIN NERVE CELL; COGNITION; COLOR DISCRIMINATION; COLOR VISION; FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; HUMAN; KNOWLEDGE; MIRROR NEURON; MOTOR CORTEX; NEUROIMAGING; NONHUMAN; PRIORITY JOURNAL; PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY; PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY; REVIEW; SEMANTICS; SIMULATION; TRANSCRANIAL MAGNETIC STIMULATION; ANIMAL; BRAIN; PHYSIOLOGY;

ANIMALS; BRAIN; COGNITION; HUMANS; MIRROR NEURONS; PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY;

EID: 84904622947     PISSN: 0147006X     EISSN: 15454126     Source Type: Book Series    
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-neuro-071013-013950     Document Type: Review

References (92)

1. Aziz-Zadeh L,Wilson SM, Rizzolatti G, IacoboniM. 2006. Congruent embodied representations for visually presented actions and linguistic phrases describing actions. Curr. Biol. 16:1818-23
2. Barsalou LW. 2008. Grounded cognition. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 59:617-45
3. Bedny M, Caramazza A. 2011. Perception, action, and word meanings in the human brain: the case from action verbs. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 1224:81-95
4. Borghi AM, Glenberg AM, Kaschak MP. 2004. Putting words in perspective. Mem. Cogn. 32:863-73
5. Bosbach S, Prinz W, Kerzel D. 2005. Is direction position? Position- and direction-based correspondence effects in tasks with moving stimuli. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. A 58:467-506
6. Boulenger V, Hauk O, Pulvermuller F. 2009. Grasping ideas with the motor system: semantic somatotopy in idiom comprehension. Cereb. Cortex 19:1905-14
7. Bouvier SE, Engel SA. 2006. Behavioral deficits and cortical damage loci in cerebral achromatopsia. Cereb. Cortex 16:183-91
8. BuccinoG,Riggio L,Melli G, Binkofski F,Gallese V, Rizzolatti G. 2005. Listening to action-related sentences modulates the activity of the motor system: a combined TMS and behavioral study. Brain Res. Cogn. Brain Res. 24:355-63
9. Buccino G, Vogt S, Ritzl A, Fink GR, Zilles K, et al. 2004. Neural circuits underlying imitation learning of hand actions: an event-related fMRI study. Neuron 42:323-34
10. CaggianoV, Fogassi L, Rizzolatti G, Casile A, GieseMA, Thier P. 2012. Mirror neurons encode the subjective value of an observed action. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 109:11848-53
11. Caggiano V, Fogassi L, Rizzolatti G, Pomper JK, Thier P, et al. 2011. View-based encoding of actions in mirror neurons of area F5 in macaque premotor cortex. Curr. Biol. 21:144-48
12. Caramazza A, Hillis AE,Rapp BC, Romani C. 1990. TheMultiple Semantics Hypothesis: multiple confusions? Cogn. Neuropsychol. 7:161-89
13. Caspers S, Zilles K, Laird AR, Eickhoff SB. 2010. ALE meta-analysis of action observation and imitation in the human brain. NeuroImage 50:1148-67
14. CattaneoL,Caruana F, JezziniA,Rizzolatti G. 2009. Representation of goal and movements without overtmotor behavior in the human motor cortex: a transcranial magnetic stimulation study. J. Neurosci. 29:11134-38
15. Cattaneo L, Sandrini M, Schwarzbach J. 2010. State-dependent TMS reveals a hierarchical representation of observed acts in the temporal, parietal, and premotor cortices. Cereb. Cortex 20:2252-58
16. Chatterjee A. 2010. Disembodying cognition. Lang. Cogn. 2:79-116
17. Chong TT, Cunnington R,WilliamsMA, KanwisherN,Mattingley JB. 2008. fMRI adaptation reveals mirror neurons in human inferior parietal cortex. Curr. Biol. 18:1576-80
18. Cook R, Bird G, Catmur C, Press C, Heyes C. 2014. Mirror neurons: from origin to function. Behav. Brain Sci. In press
19. Csibra G. 2008. Action mirroring and action understanding: an alternative account. In Sensorimotor Foundations of Higher Cognition: Attention and Performance XXII, ed. P Haggard, Y Rossetti, M Kawato, pp. 435-59. New York: Oxford Univ. Press
20. DAusilio A, Pulvermuller F, Salmas P, Bufalari I, Begliomini C, Fadiga L. 2009. The motor somatotopy of speech perception. Curr. Biol. 19:381-85
21. de Zubicaray G, Arciuli J, McMahon K. 2013. Putting an end to the motor cortex representations of action words. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 25:1957-74
22. di Pellegrino G, Fadiga L, Fogassi L, Gallese V, Rizzolatti G. 1992. Understanding motor events: a neurophysiological study. Exp. Brain Res. 91:176-80
23. Dinstein I, Hasson U, Rubin N, Heeger DJ. 2007. Brain areas selective for both observed and executed movements. J. Neurophysiol. 98:1415-27
24. Dinstein I, Thomas C, Behrmann M, Heeger DJ. 2008. A mirror up to nature. Curr. Biol. 18:R13-18
25. Fadiga L, Fogassi L, Pavesi G, Rizzolatti G. 1995. Motor facilitation during action observation: a magnetic stimulation study. J. Neurophysiol. 73:2608-11
26. Ferrari PF, Rozzi S, Fogassi L. 2005. Mirror neurons responding to observation of actions made with tools in monkey ventral premotor cortex. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 17:212-26
27. Fischer MH, Zwaan RA. 2008. Embodied language: a review of the role of the motor system in language comprehension. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 61:825-50
28. Fogassi L, Ferrari PF, Gesierich B, Rozzi S, Chersi F, Rizzolatti G. 2005. Parietal lobe: from action organization to intention understanding. Science 308:662-67
29. Freedman DJ, Assad JA. 2011. A proposed common neural mechanism for categorization and perceptual decisions. Nat. Neurosci. 14:143-46
30. Gallese V, Fadiga L, Fogassi L, Rizzolatti G. 1996. Action recognition in the premotor cortex. Brain 119(Pt. 2):593-609
31. Gallese V, Fadiga L, Fogassi L, Rizzolatti G. 2002. Action representation and the inferior parietal lobule. In Common Mechanisms in Perception and Action: Attention and Performance, ed. W Prinz, B Hommel, pp. 334-55. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press
32. Gallese V, Lakoff G. 2005. The Brains concepts: the role of the sensory-motor system in conceptual knowledge. Cogn. Neuropsychol. 22:455-79
33. Gentilucci M, Gangitano M. 1998. Influence of automatic word reading on motor control. Eur. J. Neurosci. 10:752-56
34. Gerfo EL, Oliveri M, Torriero S, Salerno S, Koch G, Caltagirone C. 2008. The influence of rTMS over prefrontal and motor areas in a morphological task: grammatical vs. semantic effects. Neuropsychologia 46:764-70
35. Glenberg AM, Kaschak MP. 2002. Grounding language in action. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 9:558-65
36. Goldberg RF, Perfetti CA, Schneider W. 2006. Perceptual knowledge retrieval activates sensory brain regions. J. Neurosci. 26:4917-21
37. Grezes J, Armony JL, Rowe J, Passingham RE. 2003. Activations related to mirror and canonical neurones in the human brain: an fMRI study. NeuroImage 18:928-37
38. Hansen T, Olkkonen M, Walter S, Gegenfurtner KR. 2006. Memory modulates color appearance. Nat. Neurosci. 9:1367-68
39. Hauk O, Johnsrude I, Pulvermuller F. 2004. Somatotopic representation of action words in human motor and premotor cortex. Neuron 41:301-7
40. Hauk O, Pulvermuller F. 2004. Neurophysiological distinction of action words in the fronto-central cortex. Hum. Brain Mapp. 21:191-201
41. Hickok G. 2009. Eight problems for the mirror neuron theory of action understanding in monkeys and humans. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 21:1229-43
42. Iacoboni M, Woods RP, Brass M, Bekkering H, Mazziotta JC, Rizzolatti G. 1999. Cortical mechanisms of human imitation. Science 286:2526-28
43. Jacob P, Jeannerod M. 2005. The motor theory of social cognition: a critique. Trends Cogn. Sci. 9:21-25
44. Jeannerod M. 2001. Neural simulation of action: a unifying mechanism for motor cognition. NeuroImage 14:S103-9
45. Kemmerer D, Castillo JG, Talavage T, Patterson S, Wiley C. 2008. Neuroanatomical distribution of five semantic components of verbs: evidence from fMRI. Brain Lang. 107:16-43
46. KemmererD,Gonzalez-Castillo J. 2010. TheTwo-Level Theory of verbmeaning: an approach to integrating the semantics of action with the mirror neuron system. Brain Lang. 112:54-76
47. Kiefer M, Pulvermuller F. 2012. Conceptual representations in mind and brain: theoretical developments, current evidence and future directions. Cortex 48:805-25
48. Kilner JM, Neal A,Weiskopf N, Friston KJ, Frith CD. 2009. Evidence of mirror neurons in human inferior frontal gyrus. J. Neurosci. 29:10153-59
49. Kohler E, Keysers C, Umilta MA, Fogassi L, Gallese V, Rizzolatti G. 2002. Hearing sounds, understanding actions: action representation in mirror neurons. Science 297:846-48
50. Kraskov A, Dancause N, Quallo MM, Shepherd S, Lemon RN. 2009. Corticospinal neurons in macaque ventral premotor cortex with mirror properties: a potential mechanism for action suppression? Neuron 64:922-30
51. Kreiman G, Koch C, Fried I. 2000. Category-specific visual responses of single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe. Nat. Neurosci. 3:946-53
52. Kurata K, Tanji J. 1986. Premotor cortex neurons in macaques: activity before distal and proximal forelimb movements. J. Neurosci. 6:403-11
53. Lorey B, Naumann T, Pilgramm S, Petermann C, Bischoff M, et al. 2013. How equivalent are the action execution, imagery, and observation of intransitive movements? Revisiting the concept of somatotopy during action simulation. Brain Cogn. 81:139-50
54. Maeda F, Kleiner-Fisman G, Pascual-Leone A. 2002. Motor facilitation while observing hand actions: specificity of the effect and role of observers orientation. J. Neurophysiol. 87:1329-35
55. Mahon BZ, Caramazza A. 2008. A critical look at the embodied cognition hypothesis and a new proposal for grounding conceptual content. J. Physiol. Paris 102:59-70
56. Meteyard L, ZokaeiN, Bahrami B, Vigliocco G. 2008. Visualmotion interferes with lexical decision onmotion words. Curr. Biol. 18:R732-33
57. Miceli G, Fouch E, Capasso R, Shelton JR, Tomaiuolo F, Caramazza A. 2001. The dissociation of color from form and function knowledge. Nat. Neurosci. 4:662-67
58. Mott onen R, Watkins KE. 2009. Motor representations of articulators contribute to categorical perception of speech sounds. J. Neurosci. 29:9819-25
59. Mukamel R, Ekstrom AD, Kaplan J, Iacoboni M, Fried I. 2010. Single-neuron responses in humans during execution and observation of actions. Curr. Biol. 20:750-56
60. Myung JY, Blumstein SE, Sedivy JC. 2006. Playing on the typewriter, typing on the piano: manipulation knowledge of objects. Cognition 98:223-43
61. OosterhofNN,Tipper SP, DowningPE. 2012. Viewpoint (in)dependence of action representations: anMVPA study. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 24:975-89
62. Oosterhof NN, Tipper SP, Downing PE. 2013. Crossmodal and action-specific: neuroimaging the human mirror neuron system. Trends Cogn. Sci. 17:311-18
63. Oosterhof NN, Wiggett AJ, Diedrichsen J, Tipper SP, Downing PE. 2010. Surface-based information mapping reveals crossmodal vision-action representations in human parietal and occipitotemporal cortex. J. Neurophysiol. 104:1077-89
64. Papeo L, Lingnau A, Agosta S, Pascual-Leone A, Battelli L, Caramazza A. 2014. The origin of word-related motor activity. Cereb. Cortex. In press. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bht423
65. Papeo L, Pascual-Leone A, Caramazza A. 2013. Disrupting the brain to validate hypotheses on the neurobiology of language. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:148
66. Papeo L, Vallesi A, Isaja A, Rumiati RI. 2009. Effects of TMS on different stages of motor and non-motor verb processing in the primary motor cortex. PLoS ONE 4:e4508
67. Peelen M, RomagnoD, Caramazza A. 2012. Independent representations of verbs and actions in left temporal cortex. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 24:2096-107
68. Postle N, Ashton R, McFarland K, de Zubicaray GI. 2013. No specific role for the manual motor system in processing the meanings of words related to the hand. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:11
69. Postle N, McMahonKL, AshtonR,MeredithM, de Zubicaray GI. 2008. Action word meaning representations in cytoarchitectonically defined primary and premotor cortices. NeuroImage 43:634-44
70. Press C, Weiskopf N, Kilner JM. 2012. Dissociable roles of human inferior frontal gyrus during action execution and observation. NeuroImage 60:1671-77
71. Pulvermuller F. 2005. Brain mechanisms linking language and action. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 6:576-82
72. Pulvermuller F, Harle M, Hummel F. 2000. Neurophysiological distinction of verb categories. NeuroReport 11:2789-93
73. Pulvermuller F, Huss M, Kherif F, Moscoso del Prado Martin F, Hauk O, Shtyrov Y. 2006. Motor cortex maps articulatory features of speech sounds. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 103:7865-70
74. Pulvermuller F, Shtyrov Y, Ilmoniemi R. 2005. Brain signatures of meaning access in action word recognition. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 17:884-92
75. Quiroga RQ, Reddy L, Kreiman G, Koch C, Fried I. 2005. Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain. Nature 435:1102-7
76. Rizzolatti G, Fadiga L, Gallese V, Fogassi L. 1996. Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions. Brain Res. Cogn. Brain Res. 3:131-41
77. Rizzolatti G, Fogassi L, Gallese V. 2001. Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the understanding and imitation of action. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 2:661-70
78. Rizzolatti G, Scandolara C, Matelli M, Gentilucci M. 1981. Afferent properties of periarcuate neurons in macaque monkeys. I. Somatosensory responses. Behav. Brain Res. 2:125-46
79. Rizzolatti G, Sinigaglia C. 2010. The functional role of the parieto-frontal mirror circuit: interpretations and misinterpretations. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 11:264-74
80. Rueschemeyer SA, Lindemann O, van Rooij D, van DamW, Bekkering H. 2010. Effects of intentional motor actions on embodied language processing. Exp. Psychol. 57:260-66
81. Simmons WK,Martin A, Barsalou LW. 2005. Pictures of appetizing foods activate gustatory cortices for taste and reward. Cereb. Cortex 15:1602-8
82. Simmons WK, Ramjee V, Beauchamp MS, McRae K, Martin A, Barsalou LW. 2007. A common neural substrate for perceiving and knowing about color. Neuropsychologia 45:2802-10
83. Solomon KO, Barsalou LW. 2004. Perceptual simulation in property verification. Mem. Cogn. 32:244-59
84. Stanfield RA, Zwaan RA. 2001. The effect of implied orientation derived from verbal context on picture recognition. Psychol. Sci. 12:153-56
85. Tettamanti M, Buccino G, Saccuman MC, Gallese V, Danna M, et al. 2005. Listening to action-related sentences activates fronto-parietal motor circuits. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 17:273-81
86. Umilta MA, Escola L, Intskirveli I, Grammont F, Rochat M, et al. 2008. When pliers become fingers in the monkey motor system. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 105:2209-13
87. Umilta MA, Kohler E, Gallese V, Fogassi L, Fadiga L, et al. 2001. I know what you are doing: a neurophysiological study. Neuron 31:155-65
88. Urgesi C, MaieronM, Avenanti A, Tidoni E, Fabbro F, Aglioti SM. 2010. Simulating the future of actions in the human corticospinal system. Cereb. Cortex 20:2511-21
89. Watson CE, Cardillo ER, Ianni GR, Chatterjee A. 2013. Action concepts in the brain: an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 25:1191-205
90. Willems RM, Labruna L, DEsposito M, Ivry R, Casasanto D. 2011. A functional role for the motor system in language understanding: evidence from theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation. Psychol. Sci. 22:849-54
91. Zwaan RA, Stanfield RA, Yaxley RH. 2002. Language comprehendersmentally represent the shapes of objects. Psychol. Sci. 13:168-71
92. Zwaan RA, Taylor LJ. 2006. Seeing, acting, understanding: motor resonance in language comprehension. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 135:1-11