The alluring but misleading analogy between mirror neurons and the motor theory of speech.
Speech is commonly claimed to relate to mirror neurons because of the alluring surface analogy of mirror neurons to the Motor Theory of speech perception, which posits that perception and production draw upon common motor-articulatory representations. We argue that the analogy fails and highlight examples of systems-level developmental approaches that have been more fruitful in revealing perception-production associations.
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, and Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA 15208. loriholt@cmu.edu http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~holtlab.
Lori L
LL
Holt
Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. alotto@email.arizona.edu http://acns.webhost.uits.arizona.edu/
Andrew J
AJ
Lotto
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D059167:Mirror Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D012938:Social Perception