From mirror writing to mirror neurons

Abstract

The article offers a personal perspective on Simulation of Animal Behavior, starting with the inspiration of Norbert Wiener's 1948 Cybernetics for the publication of Brains, Machines, and Mathematics in 1964. This led to a range of simulations of the brains and behaviors of frogs (Rana computatrix), rats, monkeys and humans. Such work is paralleled by work in biologicallyinspired robots, traceable back to Grey Walter's Machina speculatrix of 1953. Recent work includes detailed modeling of hand control, mirror neurons and sequencing as part of a program to determine "What the Macaque Brain Tells the Human Mind". The Mirror System Hypothesis for the evolution of the language- ready brain suggests a path for evolution of brain mechanisms atop the mirror system for grasping, with new processes supporting simple imitation, complex imitation, gesture, pantomime and finally protosign and protospeech. It is argued that this progression suggests the "dead end of the simple model" if we are to fully explore the lessons of Simulation of Animal Behavior for computational neuroscience and biologically-inspired robotics. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.