Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language (review)

Since its first days, Giacomo Rizzolatti’s discovery of the so-called ‘mirror neurons’ has become an important point of reference for all those who aim at grounding human behavior in the neural basis of cognition. This holds for both concrete ‘bodily actions’ and embodied mental processes. The present volume (reflecting the output of a symposium on ‘Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language’, July 2000, Delmenhorst, Germany) first introduces the reader to the mirror neurons system (MNS) before turning to more concrete questions of how to interpret the functional scope of the MNS, to describe its evolution, and to relate it to human language and communication. The volume includes an introduction, twenty-four articles, a name index, and a subject index.

Following a brief presentation by the editors, Leonardi Fogassi and Vittorio Gallese, in their article ‘The neural correlates of action understanding in nonhuman primates’ (13–35), not only summarize the basics of the MNS hypothesis, but also draw the reader’s attention to the explanatory power of MNS observations. Most importantly, they argue in favor of an emergence model of semantics, understanding, and mindreading based on strategies to enhance the control of the cognition-environment interaction by cognition itself.

In ‘The mirror system in humans’ (38–59), Giacomo Rizzolatti, Laila Craighero, and Lucian Fadiga describe the MNS in the human brain, paying special attention to functional domain of action understanding and imitation. Gerhard Roth turns to the question ‘Is the human brain unique’ (63–76) and argues in favor of a reorganization of the frontal-prefrontal cortex and the subcortical speech center of early human beings to account for the perhaps most significant difference between nonhuman primates and human beings, namely syntactic complexity. Oliver Gruber (‘The co-evolution of language and working memory capacity in the human brain’, 77–87) continues this line of argumentation, illustrating the central role of Broca’s area not only for language, but also as an efficient working memory mechanism that again is addressed in Ava Senkfor’s contribution (‘Episodic action memory: Characterization of the time course and neural circuitry’, 87–99). Andreas Wohlschläger and Harold Bekkering (‘The role of objects in imitation’, 101–13) develop the interpretation of MNS as a system for the understanding of action and link it to a new view of imitation. The functional domain of MNS is also addressed in Günther Knoblich and Jerome Scott Jordan’s look at ‘The mirror system and joint action’ (115–24), which dwells upon paths to coordinate self- and other-generated actions. The paper by Francis Mcglone, Matthew Howard, and Neil Roberts (‘Brain activation to passive observation of grasping actions’, 125–34) offers further evidence for MNS in the human brain. Kai Vogeley and Albert Newen (‘Mirror neurons and the self construct’, 135–50) turn the reader’s attention to essentials of the neural distribution of self and other constructs, whereas Jennifer Rotondo (‘Behavioral synchronization in human conversational interaction’, 151–62) and Steven Boker (‘Symmetry building and symmetry breaking in synchronized movement’, 163–71) both describe MNS activities in nonverbal communication and interaction.

The third section of the volume concerns ‘Mirror neuron systems and the evolution of brain, communication, and language’. Lack of space precludes presenting details of all ten articles included this section. Briefly, the following issues, among others, are addressed: the evolution of language (Charles Li and Jean-Marie Hombert, 175–205); ‘dynamics gestures’ as basic particulate units of articulatory phonology (Michael Studdert-Kennedy, 207–27); ‘dialogic action games’ as the evolutionary rationale for the emergence of human language (Edda W...