Understanding the role of mirror neurons in action understanding will require more than a domain-general account

Abstract

Cook et al. propose that mirror neurons emerge developmentally through a domain-general associative mechanism. We argue that experience-sensitivity does not rule out an adaptive or genetic argument for mirror neuron function, and that current evidence suggests that mirror neurons are more specialized than the authors' account would predict. We propose that future work integrate behavioral and neurophysiological techniques used with primates to examine the proposed functions of mirror neurons in action understanding.