Department of Psychology, City University London, London EC1R 0JD, United Kingdom.
MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London SE5 8AF, United Kingdom.
Behav Brain Sci. 2014 Apr;37(2):177-92. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X13000903.
This article argues that mirror neurons originate in sensorimotor associative learning and therefore a new approach is needed to investigate their functions. Mirror neurons were discovered about 20 years ago in the monkey brain, and there is now evidence that they are also present in the human brain. The intriguing feature of many mirror neurons is that they fire not only when the animal is performing an action, such as grasping an object using a power grip, but also when the animal passively observes a similar action performed by another agent. It is widely believed that mirror neurons are a genetic adaptation for action understanding; that they were designed by evolution to fulfill a specific socio-cognitive function. In contrast, we argue that mirror neurons are forged by domain-general processes of associative learning in the course of individual development, and, although they may have psychological functions, they do not necessarily have a specific evolutionary purpose or adaptive function. The evidence supporting this view shows that (1) mirror neurons do not consistently encode action "goals"; (2) the contingency- and context-sensitive nature of associative learning explains the full range of mirror neuron properties; (3) human infants receive enough sensorimotor experience to support associative learning of mirror neurons ("wealth of the stimulus"); and (4) mirror neurons can be changed in radical ways by sensorimotor training. The associative account implies that reliable information about the function of mirror neurons can be obtained only by research based on developmental history, system-level theory, and careful experimentation.
本文认为，镜像神经元起源于感觉运动联想学习，因此需要一种新的方法来研究它们的功能。镜像神经元大约在 20 年前在猴子大脑中被发现，现在有证据表明它们也存在于人类大脑中。许多镜像神经元的一个有趣特征是，它们不仅在动物执行动作时（例如使用紧握力抓取物体），而且在动物被动观察另一个代理执行类似动作时也会发射。人们普遍认为，镜像神经元是一种理解动作的遗传适应；它们是进化设计来完成特定的社会认知功能的。相比之下，我们认为镜像神经元是个体发展过程中联想学习的一般领域过程所形成的，尽管它们可能具有心理功能，但它们不一定具有特定的进化目的或适应功能。支持这种观点的证据表明：（1）镜像神经元并不一致地编码动作“目标”；（2）联想学习的偶然性和上下文敏感性解释了镜像神经元的全部特性；（3）人类婴儿获得了足够的感觉运动经验来支持镜像神经元的联想学习（“刺激的丰富性”）；（4）通过感觉运动训练，镜像神经元可以以激进的方式改变。联想解释意味着只有基于发展历史、系统理论和仔细实验的研究才能获得关于镜像神经元功能的可靠信息。
