Functions and Development of the Mirror Neuron System

描述（由申请人提供）：两种基本能力是适应性人类功能和人类发展的核心：为实现目标而战略性地部署行动的能力，以及理解社会伙伴目标以产生适当社会反应的能力。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一个动作和我们观察别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为和社会认知功能的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，以及需要在发育过程中建立MNS动态模型，实现这一潜力的进展一直受到阻碍。项目一将开发脑电图方法，用于评估人类婴儿、儿童、成人以及婴儿和成年猴子的MNS活动。这些方法将为剩下的项目提供统一的方法核心。项目II和III将研究人类婴儿、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。项目四将开发开发中的MNS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，提供参加者征聘（项目一、二、四），并支持综合和外联活动。EEG/Computational Core B将提供设备和专业知识，以支持在项目I中开发的方法在其他项目中的部署。这种大规模的合作来自于这些实验室之间正在进行的合作工作，这些工作为将该项目推向下一个阶段奠定了基础，并开发了初步的方法。这项工作的成果将为人类基础能力的发展提供重要的新见解，并为更广泛的发展、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.