Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders, Institute of Neurology, University College London, UK.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2011 Aug;15(8):352-7. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2011.06.005. Epub 2011 Jul 19.
Many believe that the ability to understand the actions of others is made possible by mirror neurons and a network of brain areas known as the action-observation network (AON). Despite nearly two decades of research into mirror neurons and the AON, however, there is little evidence that they enable the inference of the intention of observed actions. Instead, theories of action selection during action execution indicate that a ventral pathway, linking middle temporal gyrus with the anterior inferior frontal gyrus, might encode these abstract features during action observation. Here I propose that action understanding requires more than merely the AON, and might be achieved through interactions between a ventral pathway and the dorsal AON.
许多人认为，理解他人行为的能力是通过镜像神经元和一个被称为动作观察网络（AON）的大脑区域网络实现的。然而，尽管对镜像神经元和 AON 的研究已经进行了近二十年，但几乎没有证据表明它们能够推断出观察到的动作的意图。相反，在执行动作时的动作选择理论表明，一条连接颞中回和前下额回的腹侧通路可能在动作观察过程中对这些抽象特征进行编码。在这里，我提出，动作理解不仅仅需要 AON，还可能通过腹侧通路和背侧 AON 之间的相互作用来实现。
