Motor Intentions versus Social Intentions: One System or Multiple Systems?

In this fine book philosopher Pierre Jacob and well-known cognitive neuroscientist Marc Jeannerod collaborate to bring together many key findings in the visual ventral (‘what’) and dorsal (‘where’ and ‘how’) systems. One of Jacob and Jeannerod’s major contribution is to highlight the mechanisms that allow for skilful social interactions. They propose a distinction between the ‘mirror neuron’ system for perceiving and responding to object-oriented actions and a ‘social perception network’ devoted to the visual analysis of human actions directed towards conspecifics. In this review we will discuss some recent neurophysiological, neuropsychological and brain imaging studies suggesting that this dichotomy might be too strict.