MIRROR NEURONS AND THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE

Gestures: "Language within our grasp"

Some of the most tantalizing evidence for the role of mirror neurons in language comes from locations of particular brain regions that exhibit mirror activity in monkeys and in humans. In monkeys, mirror neurons reside in the F5 region of the brain. Intriguingly, our own mirror systems for grasping reside in Broca's area - a brain region that has long been understood to play a major role in our ability to produce speech. This does not appear to be mere coincidence; after further examining the architecture of these two regions, researchers have speculated Broca's area to have evolved from F5. If this is the case, then it suggests that our language abilities are intertwined with a mirror circuitry endowed to us by our primitive ancestors. Thus, by examining the properties of these systems in living primates, we can hope to better understand how language emerged millions of years ago. To begin our discussion of how mirror neurons may have contributed to the evolution of our ability to use language, we must first explore what Arbib considers to have been the great-greatgreat-grandfather of the first word: the grasp. When a monkey wishes to grasp an object, several processes occur within the cortex. Visual information about the object is sent from the primary visual cortex to another region of the brain called area AIP, where information is extracted relating to the object's

affordances Affordances are neural representations of the ways in which we can interact with objects in the world; thus, the AIP "sees" the world as a mosaic of "hows." Visual data from the primary visual cortex also enters the ventral stream, where information regarding the object's identity - the "what" - is analyzed. This data - plus other information relating to the individual's current environmental context - convenes on the prefrontal cortex, the brain's decision-making powerhouse. The final output is relayed to area F5, where the most appropriate "action" is selected and relayed to the motor cortex for execution. At this level of processing, an "action" corresponds to a complete package of individual muscle movements that result in a single behavior, such as a "precision grasp," a "tearing" motion, or the "placing" of an apple on a counter. While most of the neurons in region F5 are not equipped with mirror characteristics (those which are not are referred to as canonical neurons), around 20% respond whether the monkey performs a specific action or another monkey (or the experimenter) performs the same action. Many other systems in the brain besides those already listed come into play to enable mirror responding, but an in depth discussion of these would only muddle our discussion. The final result is what's important. Visual information about hand shape and trajectory, as well as object affordances are all collected and compared, projecting outputs to mirror neurons in F5. As a result, a particular mirror neuron will fire whenever the monkey observes a hand to be moving towards an object, and the shape of the hand matches one of the object's affordances. For example, a mirror neuron associated with the execution of a "precision grip" might begin to fire rapidly when the monkey observes an experimenter reaching for a peanut with thumb and forefinger. Now that we've explored some of the fundamentals of mirror circuitry, we can begin to appreciate the ramifications of having a brain equipped to respond in this manner, especially as these ramifications might relate to language ability. The mere fact that a

mirror neuron fires is not sufficient in explaining how an animal can formulate an "understanding" of the observed action. Arbib suggests that within other systems above the level of mirror circuitry, monkeys carry a representation of the action that includes its physical dimension (the movement itself) as well as its consequence (what the movement will amount to). It is at this level that he says monkeys - as well as humans - hold their most rudimentary "understanding" of observed actions. Originally, this kind of a system might have been part of a selfcorrection mechanism, where the animal's observations of its own erroneous behavior might have guided corrective responses. Later on, this system might have been co-opted to support an elaboration of the species' social abilities, enabling it to compete or cooperate with another animal based on its understanding of observed intentions. This second possibility is most intriguing to our discussion of language. The ability to recognize that another individual is performing a meaningful action, to recognize this action as distinct from other actions, and to use this information to guide the organism's own reactions brings us back to the idea of parity and shared repertoires of meaning. With mirror systems, our ancestors possessed a strong parity for understanding hand motions. Using our imagination, we can conceptualize how two monkeys happening upon a food source might engage in a "dialogue" of actions. One might boldly reach for a banana; the other, understanding the meaning of this action, might swat the hand away and take an aggressive posture. Arbib stresses that mirror circuitry alone cannot account for anything as complex as true language. However, it provides the essential mechanism that grants individuals the ability to understand each other's intentions. As we shall see, further circuitry may have refined these basic capabilities into much more sophisticated behavioral responses.