A Biologically Inspired Visuo-Motor Control Model based on a Deflationary Interpretation of Mirror Neurons

We propose a new deflationary interpretation for the functional role of mirror neurons discovered by Rizzolatti and colleagues into the macaque’s F5 motor area. Several functional interpretations of the mirror activity have been proposed, emphasizing their role in action understanding and representing, language evolution, or mind-reading abilities. However, according to the interpretation presented here, full understanding of agent goals and intentional action are related to mirror neuron activity only insofar as the process of understanding an intentional action necessarily involves the capability of assigning a “structural description” to the action. In particular, we argue that mirror activity is involved in both recognizing action structural features and associating these features to motor commands. Our functional interpretation includes an anticipatory mechanism, enabling one to verify whether the actual, suitably coded visual input, matches an expected visual input computed on the basis of a motor command sequence. This mechanism is involved in both action recognition and action execution control. We believe that this mirror neuron model could fit biological data better than the Oztop and Arbib model. Starting from this interpretation, we propose a biologically inspired visuo-motor control model merging basic elements of the Oztop and Arbib model with an expected perception mechanism. This model has been formalized within an algorithmic stance however actual implementation is in progress.