The mirror neuron system: grasping others’ actions from birth?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the adult human brain, the presence of a system matching the observation and the execution of actions is well established. This mechanism is thought to rely primarily on the contribution of so-called 'mirror neurons', cells that are active when a specific gesture is executed as well as when it is seen or heard. Despite the wealth of evidence detailing the existence of a mirror neuron system (MNS) in the adult brain, little is known about its normal development. Yet, a better understanding of the MNS in infants would be of considerable theoretical and clinical interest, as dysfunctions within the MNS have been demonstrated in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder. Arguments in favor of an innate, or very early, mechanism underlying action understanding mainly come from studies of neonatal imitation, the existence of which has been questioned by some. Here, we review evidence suggesting the presence of an MNS in the human child, as well as work that suggests, although indirectly, the existence of a mechanism matching the perception and the execution of actions in the human newborn.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".