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Embodied simulation: From mirror neurones to social cognition| old_uid | 1716 |
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| title | Embodied simulation: From mirror neurones to social cognition |
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| start_date | 2006/11/08 |
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| schedule | 16h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | Our seemingly effortless capacity to conceive of the acting bodies inhabiting our social world as goal-oriented persons like us depends on the constitution of a “we-centric” shared meaningful interpersonal space. I have proposed that this shared manifold space can be characterized at the functional level as embodied simulation, a specific mechanism, likely constituting a basic functional feature by means of which our brain/body system models its interactions with the world. The mirror neuron systems and the other non-motor mirroring neural clusters in our brain represent one particular sub-personal instantiation of embodied simulation. With this mechanism we do not just “see” an action, an emotion, or a sensation. Side by side with the sensory description of the observed social stimuli, internal representations of the body states associated with these actions, emotions, and sensations are evoked in the observer, ‘as if’ he/she would be doing a similar action or experiencing a similar emotion or sensation. Social cognition is not only explicitly reasoning about the contents of someone else’s mind. Our brains, and those of other primates, appear to have developed a basic functional mechanism, embodied simulation, which gives us an experiential insight of other minds. This proposal opens new perspectives on the study of the neural underpinnings of psychopathological states and psychotherapeutic relations, and of other aspects of intersubjectivity like aesthetic experience and ethics.
Vittorio Gallese, MD and Neurologist, is Professor of Physiology at the Dept. of Neuroscience of the University of Parma, Italy. As cognitive neuroscientist he focuses his research interests on the relationship between the sensory-motor system and cognition, both in non-human primates and humans using a variety of neurophysiologycal and neuroimaging techniques. Among his major contributions is the discovery, together with colleagues in Parma, of mirror neurons, and the elaboration of a theoretical model of basic aspects of social cognition. He is actively developing an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of intersubjectivity and social cognition in collaboration with psychologists, psycholinguists and philosophers. He has been George Miller visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley. |
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| responsibles | Bishop |
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