Extending the mirror neuron system model, I. Audible actions and invisible grasps.

The paper introduces mirror neuron system II (MNS2), a new version of the MNS model (Oztop and Arbib in Biol Cybern 87 (2):116-140, 2002) of action recognition learning by mirror neurons of the macaque brain. The new model uses a recurrent architecture that is biologically more plausible than that of the original model. Moreover, MNS2 extends the capacity of the model to address data on audio-visual mirror neurons and on the response of mirror neurons when the target object was recently visible but is currently hidden.