Division Neuroscience, Department of Nuclear Medicine, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milano, Italy.
Cortex. 2012 Jul;48(7):923-35. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2011.05.020. Epub 2011 Jun 1.
Converging evidence indicates that the processing of some aspects related to the phonetic and the semantic components of language is tightly associated with both the perceptual and the motor neural systems. It has been suggested that mirror neurons contribute to language understanding by virtue of a neurophysiological response matching perceptual linguistic information onto corresponding motor plans. This proposal has sometimes been extended to advocate that the language competence as a whole, including syntax, may be ascribed to this kind of perceptuo-motor mappings. This position paper examines what kinds of empirical and theoretical challenges such general mirror neuron language accounts need to face in order to proof their validity--challenges that we think have not been adequately addressed yet. We highlight that the most important limitation is constituted by the fact that some core defining properties of human language, at the phonetic, semantic, and especially at the syntactic level, are not transparent to the bodily senses and thus they cannot be the direct source of mirror neuron perceptuo-motor matching.
越来越多的证据表明，语言的某些与语音和语义成分相关的处理过程与感知和运动神经系统紧密相关。有人认为，镜像神经元通过将感知语言信息与相应的运动计划相匹配的神经生理反应，有助于语言理解。这一观点有时被扩展为主张整体语言能力，包括语法，都可以归因于这种感知-运动映射。本文探讨了这种普遍的镜像神经元语言解释需要面对哪些经验和理论上的挑战才能证明其有效性，我们认为这些挑战尚未得到充分解决。我们强调，最重要的限制是，人类语言的一些核心定义属性，在语音、语义，特别是在句法层面上，对于身体感觉来说并不透明，因此它们不可能是镜像神经元感知-运动匹配的直接来源。
