One of the problems I’ve encountered with certain people who like to talk about mirror neurons is that they tend to think of them as being, in themselves, the causal explanation for empathy, etc., rather than just neurons that happen to be involved in broader behavior-modeling circuits. Sort of a “built by evolution, run by magic” way of thinking about them. As though they were sensory neurons, tapping into “telepathic energies” or whatever.
So I strongly agree that moving away from talking about mirror neurons like they’re some special class of neurons is important for deconfusing what is actually going on in the brain. Instead, the focus should be on figuring out what sort of brain circuitry is necessary for learning common neural representations that can associate self-behavior with other-agent-behavior.
One of the problems I’ve encountered with certain people who like to talk about mirror neurons is that they tend to think of them as being, in themselves, the causal explanation for empathy, etc., rather than just neurons that happen to be involved in broader behavior-modeling circuits. Sort of a “built by evolution, run by magic” way of thinking about them. As though they were sensory neurons, tapping into “telepathic energies” or whatever.
So I strongly agree that moving away from talking about mirror neurons like they’re some special class of neurons is important for deconfusing what is actually going on in the brain. Instead, the focus should be on figuring out what sort of brain circuitry is necessary for learning common neural representations that can associate self-behavior with other-agent-behavior.