The Mirror Neuron System: A review of its role in action understanding, action intention recognition, empathy and autism spectrum disorders.

Abstract:

The capacity to understand the emotional states of people represents one of the most amazing characteristics that humans share. This capacity allows us to proceed properly through social interactions in daily life. By recognizing other people’s gestures and postures, we can be aware of the potential emotions that these people might be experiencing. Consequently, we can get “connected” with those emotions and respond to them in an adequate manner. This amazing characteristic in humans is known as “empathy”. The role of empathy therefore, is considered to be essential for socialization,“allowing the sharing of experiences, needs and goals across individuals”(Carr et al., 2003). However, studies related to the neurological mechanisms underlying empathy are still a field of interest for many researches. To date, studies correlating the activation of the so called “mirror neuron system”(MNS) with the levels of empathy in both healthy individuals and patients with autism spectrum disorder have shown to be the most widely studied regarding the basis of empathy in humans.

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