Functions and Development of the Mirror Neuron System

描述(申请人提供)：两种基本能力是适应人类功能和人类发展的核心：能够战略性地部署服务于目标的行动，以及能够理解社会伙伴的目标，以便产生适当的社会反应。最近的神经科学发现表明，这些基本能力是密切相关的：一个被称为镜像神经元系统(MNS)的神经网络在我们执行某个动作时和当我们观察到其他人执行该动作时都会做出反应。这些发现有可能彻底改变对目标导向行动和社会认知功能个体发生的科学理解。然而，由于缺乏对婴儿MNS活动的神经测量，缺乏对婴儿社会认知功能的综合测量，以及需要开发MNS发育过程中的动态模型，实现这一潜力的进展受到了阻碍。这里提出的计划项目解决了这些需求：项目I将开发用于评估人类婴儿、儿童和成人以及婴儿和成年猴子的MNS活动的脑电方法。这些方法将为其余项目提供统一的方法核心。项目II和项目III将调查人类婴儿、婴儿和成年猴子的MNS的社会认知功能，将社会认知功能的测量与项目1中开发的神经测量相结合。项目IV将开发MNS发育的神经计算模型，整合所有项目的数据。行政核心A将为每个项目提供预算和后勤支助，提供参与者征聘(项目一、二、四)，并支持综合和外联活动。脑电/计算核心B将提供设施和专门知识，以支持在其他项目中部署项目I中开发的方法。这种大规模的合作来自于这些实验室正在进行的合作工作，这些工作已经奠定了基础，并开发了将该计划带到下一个水平的初步方法。这项工作的成果将为基础人类能力的发展提供关键的新见解，以及为更广泛的发展、比较和临床研究提供创新的新工具、方法和见解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Two fundamental abilities are central to adaptive human functioning and human development: the ability to deploy actions strategically in service of goals and the ability to apprehend the goals of social partners in order to produce appropriate social responses. Recent neuroscientific findings indicate that these foundational capacities are intimately related: A neural network known as the mirror neuron system (MNS) responds both when we perform an action and when we observe someone else perform that action. These findings hold the potential to revolutionize scientific understanding of the ontogeny of goal-directed action and social-cognitive functioning. However, progress in realizing this potential has been held back by the lack of neural measures of MNS activity in infants, a lack of integrated measures of social-cognitive functions in infants, and the need to develop models of MNS dynamics during development. The Program Project proposed here addresses these needs: Project I will develop EEG methods for assessing MNS activity in human infants, children, and adults as well as infant and adult monkeys. These methods will provide a unified methodological core for the remaining projects. Projects II & III will investigate the social-cognitive functions of the MNS in human infants and infant and adult monkeys, integrating measures of social cognitive functioning with the neural measures developed in Project 1. Project IV will develop a neurocomputational model of the developing MNS, integrating data across all projects. Administrative Core A will provide budgetary and logistical support for each project, provide participant recruitment (Project I, II, IV), and support integrative and outreach activities. EEG/Computational Core B will provide facilities and expertise to support the deployment of the methods developed in Project I across the other projects. This large-scale collaboration emerges from ongoing collaborative work across these laboratories that has laid the groundwork and developed initial methods for taking the program to the next level. The products of this work will provide critical new insights into the development of foundational human capacities as well as innovative new tools, approaches and insights for broader developmental, comparative, and clinical research.