The simulating social mind: The role of the mirror neuron system and simulation in the social and communicative deficits of autism spectrum disorders

“In a series of studies conducted by Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith (1985, 1986), typically developing children, children with Down's syndrome, and children with autism were given the " Sally-Anne " test.”

“Furthermore, available data on MNS abnormalities in ASD leave open the question of whether these findings indicate (i) an initial MNS disruption as a starting state in ASD [62], (ii) the effects of atypical social attention to social stimuli [61,63] or (iii) downstream neuropsychological effects of an altered history…”

“ing the development of the links between action, intentional attunement [49] and the growth of a simulating social mind [27,50,51].”

“The advantage of a priming account is that it promises a relatively simple, computationally inexpensive explanation of the basic mechanisms underpinning communication that is compatible with implementation by the human ‘mirror neuron’ system [6–9].”

“Indeed, some researchers have proposed that understanding early deficits in the ability to imitate others, along with the possible role of an atypically functioning mirror neuron system, are key to understanding the more cognitive aspects of social deficits in ASD (Rogers and Pennington, 1991; Charman et al., 1997; Wi…”

“Many have suggested that abnormalities in specific functionally defined systems, such as the mirror neuron system, underlie ASD (Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007; Williams, et al., 2006).”

“…suffer from impaired higher-order theories of others’ minds (Baron-Cohen, leslie, and Frith 1985); that autistic individuals possess dysfunctional simulation mechanisms (oberman and Ramachandran 2007); and that autism is best explained with reference to a deficit theory of mind module (Adams 2011).”

“In individuals with autism, this mu rhythm suppression is not observed compared to typically developing children, supporting the role of an altered MNS (Oberman et al., 2005 , 2008; Bernier et al.,2007; Oberman and Ramachandran,2007).”

“Involuntary facial mimicry has been implicated in, and thought to facilitate, empathy via a process of simulation (Decety & Jackson, 2004 ; Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007 ).”

“Imitation of movements and emotions are thought to be the key elements of affective, social, and communication development in children.(32) We suggest that the presence of gross motor deficits may reduce the variety of play activities in which the child engages and contributes to a low selfesteem, which then adversely…”

“These fundamental impairments in self-awareness and knowledge may, in turn, diminish one’s ability to integrate what is known about the self with what one observes in others, which is essential for social cognitive development (Mundy & Newell, 2007; Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007).”

“The social cues of looking stern, upset, happy, or excited may elicit a set of similar emotions in the child due to the mirroring effect of the network of neurons that are designed to learn from these social cues in our environment (Oberman and Ramachandran 2007).”

“In individuals with autism, it has been proposed that the imitation deficit may be the result of abnormal mirror neuron development that in turn, is also responsible for the deficits in self-other mapping, as well as the impairment in social cognitive skills (Oberman and Ramachandran 2007; Williams et al. 2001).”

“While it was initially suggested that this reduced/absent activity reflects a “broken” MNS (Williams et al., 2001; Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007), more recent results and analysis suggests that reduced/absent mirror neuron activity may reflect reduced social engagement in this population (Oberman…”

“…action perception system have been suggested to underlie the problems with social interaction observed in ASC (Iacoboni & Dapretto, 2006; Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007; Williams, Whiten, Suddendorf, & Perrett, 2001), and it has been suggested that the perception of biological motion may be…”

“…language, theory of mind, and 5 Would be interesting to explore if this is similar to the so called ‘‘vibration’’ between people. empathy (Williams et al. 2001; Oberman and Ramachandran 2007; Oberman et al. 2005; Gallese 2003, 2006; Iacoboni and Dapretto 2006; Oberman and Ramachandran 2007).”

“Recent studies suggest that these mechanisms could be deficient in individuals affected by Autistic Spectrum Disorder (for review, see Gallese 2003b, 2006; Oberman and Ramachandran 2007).”

“…et al., 2004; Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2008; Spaulding, 2013); (4) philosophical aspects, such as how mirror neurons are related to mind reading (Keysers and Gazzola, 2007), the awareness of self and others, or empathy (e.g., Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007; Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2008).”

“An interesting developmental suggestion about the interplay between simulation mechanisms and social deficits has recently been put forward by Oberman & Ramachandran (2007), who propose that in typically developing individuals the abilities of Theory-of-Mind (ToM), empathy, perceptual recognition,…”

“…to note that simulation theories of ASD are not restricted to emotional functioning but cover a wide spectrum of processes ranging from action perception, imitation, and understanding of other minds (Iacoboni & Dapretto, 2006; Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007; Williams, Whiten, & Singh, 2004).”

“…sensory-to-motor remapping during action observation and imitation, and it might contribute to the MNS impairment, which is related to the deficit of action understanding (Fecteau et al. 2006; Iacoboni and Dapretto 2006; Oberman and Ramachandran 2007; Rizzolatti et al. 2009; Williams et al. 2001).”

“One recent hypothesis states that deficits in brain circuits that underlie perception–action coupling, or the automatic preparation of motor programs upon the perception of another individual performing that action, form the basis for impairments in mindreading and empathy (Gallese and Goldman, 1998; Iacoboni and Dapr…”

“…of others’ actions and intentions as well as to develop self-representations and self-awareness (Ramachandran, 2011; Ramachandran & Oberman, 2006; Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007).3 Furthermore, he proposed that the functions of mirror neurons, including empathy, understanding others’ feelings,…”

“Also, children with autism, a disorder that may be related to MN-system abnormalities ( Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007 ), show a marked reduction in contagious yawning despite exhibiting “normal” spontaneous yawning behavior (Senju et al., 2007).”

“It has been hypothesized that this " mirror " property may form the most basic biological mechanism by which we internalize and learn from another person ' s thoughts and actions (for a discussion, see Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007 ).”

“Even the proponents of the MNS dysfunction hypothesis of ASD acknowledge that a deficit in the MNS, although able to explain some social-cognitive dysfunctions, as of yet does not explain other key symptoms of ASD, such as repetitive behaviors and restricted interests [39].”

“It has been suggested that impairments in action understanding and imitation in individuals with ASD can be explained by an abnormal mirror neuron system (MNS) (Williams et al. 2001; Oberman and Ramachandran 2007; Iacoboni and Dapretto 2006).”

“The pSTS and the parietofrontal mirror system form part of a wider action observation network (AON), which is thought to underlie many social abilities (Sinigaglia and Rizzolatti, 2011; Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007; Decety and Sommerville, 2008).”

“…studies showed the involvement of the bilateral DLPFC, the premotor, and the primarymotor areas in children with ASD [Iacoboni & Dapretto, 2006; Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007; Rizzolatti & Fabbri-Destro, 2010], some of the inconsistent findings of previous studies can be explained by not only…”

“…the animal and human studies, taken together, suggest that an action–observation–execution matching system similar to that reported in the primate studies, also exists in humans (see Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007 for a detailed review of human neuroanatomical substrates of the mirror neuron system).”

“It has been suggested that those deficits in emotion, possibly produced by disrupting the cerebellarlimbic connection [Stoodley and Schmahmann, 2009], can affect the ability to communicate and empathize with the perspectives of others [Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007].”

“Researchers in the field of neuroscience have used functional magnetic resonance imaging to detect and record brain wave activity that identifies specific parts of the brain that are particularly active when empathic emotions and cognitive perspective taking occur in study participants ( Leslie, Johnson-Frey, & Grafto…”

“That is, an automatic mimicking occurs at a neuronal level when humans observe another’s actions, allowing the observer to simulate the emotions that accompany those actions and gain insight into the others’ behaviors, thoughts, and feelings (Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007).”

“This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. imitation (for review, see Klin et al.…”

“Some evidence has suggested that reduced mirror system (Cole et al., 2018a; Iacoboni and Dapretto, 2006; Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007; Ramachandran and Oberman, 2006) or reduced mentalizing system function (Baron-Cohen et al.”

“In individuals with autism, dysfunction of the mirror neuron system is thought to underlie deficits in emotional empathy and aspects of social cognition [Buccino & Amore, 2008; Iacoboni & Dapretto, 2006; Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007].”

“…navigation among individuals with ASD, relative to age, sex, and IQ matched typically developing individuals, and the first study to show it in children with the disorder (although impairments in other forms of spatial memory have been demonstrated in this population; Pellicano et al., 2011).”

“…states is likely to shed light not just on how the brain encodes affective stimuli but also may enrich our perspective on the neural mechanisms involved in some social and communicative deficits associated with action simulation, such as autism spectrum disorder (Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007).”

“By interacting with participants while measuring brain activity, researchers can gain insights into the neural correlates of social interaction and communication ( 55 ).”

“In the last decade, several studies suggested that imitation deficit in autism may be explained by a disorder in perception-action coupling due to a dysfunction of the mirror neuron system, which might lead to the self-other mapping deficit in autism (Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007).”

“It has been suggested from a developmental perspective that motor skills are important for acquiring communication skills (McCleery et al., 2013; Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007).”

“The idea that ‘simulator neurons’ are responsible for understanding actions, thoughts, and emotions is taken up by Oberman and Ramachandran (2007) who amass evidence that the mirror neuron system as an internal simulation mechanism is dysfunctional in cases of autism.”

“Another recent neural theory of autism suggests that a dysfunctional mirror neuron system may be fundamental to the aetiology of autism [159, 160].”

“…provider and the involved child by poor reward-function of social cues (Kohls et al., 2012) as well as by deficient attention-shift mechanism (Akshoomoff et al., 2002), deficit imitation mechanisms (Williams et al., 2001), and deficit internal simulation mechanisms (Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007).”

“Research in mirror neurons provides evidence that our brains are hardwired to respond to other’s pain and emotions (Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007).”

“…theory of mind deficits in autism (e.g. Rogers and Pennington, 1991; Meltzoff and Gopnik, 1993; Williams et al., 2001; Iacoboni and Dapretto, 2006; Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007), suggesting that motor contagion from eye gaze may be crucial for translating from the observed to the executed…”

“Additionally, recent studies suggest that the mirror neuron system may also play a role in the behavioral symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (for a review see Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007).”

“, 2012), and the suppression of (mu) activity over central EEG electrodes during observation of social interaction (Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007; Oberman et al., 2007; Moore et al., 2012).”

“…of York, Heslington, York, North Yorkshire YO10 5DD, UK 2 Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Faculty of Health, Deakin University Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Melbourne, VIC 3125, Australia 1 3 difficulties these individuals experience (Iacoboni and Dapretto 2006; Oberman and Ramachandran 2007).”

“Counter to social deficit views of ASD (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 2000; Chevallier et al., 2012; Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007), we did not find any evidence that slower processing speed in ASD is domain-specific.”

“Significant mu suppression has been consistently shown in BM perception, action, and imagination (e.g., Singh et al., 2011; Perry, Troje, & Bentin, 2010; Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007; Ulloa & Pineda, 2007).”

“…neural representations for self-experience of an emotion and the observation of the same emotion in others (Wicker et al., 2003; Avenanti et al., 2005; Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007; Niedenthal et al., 2010; Gallese and Sinigaglia, 2011; Lamm and Majdand zi c, 2015; Rütgen et al., 2015a, b).”

“…disruption in these precognitive embodied simulation processes may be related to the social deficits observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD; Gallagher, 2004; Iacoboni & Dapretto, 2006; Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007; Rizzolatti & Fabbri-Destro, 2010; Williams, Whiten, Suddendorf, & Perrett, 2001).”

“Second, if atypical imitation abilities in ASD and schizophrenia are due to impaired engagement of the MNS [9,39–41] and a continuum exists between subclinical and clinical populations, the presence of autistic-like as well as schizotypal traits should result in reduced automatic imitation.”

“Although the current study did not distinguish among theories of autism, it provides general support for theories positing a central role of empathy impairments in the social and communication deficits present in autism (e.g., BaronCohen et al. 1985; Oberman and Ramachandran 2007).”