Antonia F de C Hamilton

..We suggest the broken mirror theory of autism is premature and that better cognitive models of social behavior within and beyond the mirror neuron system are required to understand the causes of poor social interaction in autism...

..Current data can be better understood under an alternative model in which social top-down response modulation is abnormal in autism. The implications of this model and future research directions are discussed...

..0? Neuroimage.) outline the need for a universal coordinate database and some possible approaches to creating one. I highlight the issue of minimal or maximal database scope and advocate a bottom-up approach to this problem...

..Significant RS effects for action retrieval could be identified with as little as 5 min of fMRI data and underscores the potential of using RS to characterize representational structure within the motor system...

..More subtle theories which distinguish between different types of mirroring and different types of mentalising may be able to account for the present data, and further research is required to test and refine these theories...

..I suggest that top-down modulation of the direct M route may be dysfunctional in individuals with autism, leading to abnormal behaviours on mimicry tasks as well as other social disabilities...

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..These findings resolve discrepancies in previous studies of visual perspective taking in autism, and demonstrate that level 2 visual perspective taking is a mentalising task...

..Our findings suggest that the AON comprises separate and dissociable components for motor planning and observing other people's actions...

..Thus, brain regions associated with mirroring and mentalising functions are differentially affected in autistic spectrum conditions...

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..Our data reveal an extended brain network for understanding other people and their everyday actions that go beyond the traditional action observation network...

..e., human or shape). Further, the results have consequence for theories of goal understanding in situations without access to biological form or motion...

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..Furthermore, activity in premotor and parietal areas during action simulation is enhanced by the ability to execute a learned action irrespective of stimulus familiarity or semantic label...

..These regions were not sensitive to the trajectory taken by the actor's hand. This result demonstrates that the anterior intraparietal sulcus represents the goal of an observed action...

..This supports the hypothesis that brain regions within and beyond the putative human mirror neuron system are involved in action comprehension within social contexts...

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..Findings are consistent with a theory of embodiment in which there can be clear overlap in brain systems that support conceptual knowledge and control of object manipulation...

..Our results show that direct eye contact rapidly and specifically enhances mimicry of hand actions. These findings have implications for understanding the role of eye contact as a controlling signal in human non-verbal social behaviour...

..New data suggest that even children with autism are subject to race and gender stereotypes. This result constrains theories of stereotype acquisition and social cognition in autism...

..We suggest that these three studies can be best explained by the active-self theory, which claims that the direction of prime-to-behavior effects depends on how primes are processed in relation to the 'self'...

..We suggest that this STORM account of mimicry is important for our understanding of social behavior and social cognition, and provides implications for future research in autism...

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..This demonstrates that the integrity of left inferior frontal gyrus is necessary to make accurate perceptual judgments about other people's actions...

..This demonstrates that controlling the statistics of movements in the presence of signal-dependent noise may be a fundamental and unifying principle of goal-directed movements...