Papers by Corrado Sinigaglia
Minimal Cooperation and Shared Agency, 2020
Acting together with a purpose is a familiar feature of everyday life. We jump together, play mus... more Acting together with a purpose is a familiar feature of everyday life. We jump together, play music together and move tables together. But what do we experience of action in acting together? It is perhaps tempting to suppose that there is a special way in which we can experience our own actions, and that we cannot experience the actions of others in this way. This view would imply that in acting together, our own actions are experienced in a way that our partners' actions are not. However recent research on motor representation suggests that, in observing another act, it may be possible to experience her actions in whatever sense we can experience our own actions. This makes it at least conceivable that in acting together we can experience the actions each of us performs in the same way. But the occurrence of a joint action involves more than merely the occurrences of two individual actions. Are there experiences of joint actions which involve more than merely two or more experiences of individual actions?
The mirror mechanism: a basic principle of brain function
Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2016
The mirror mechanism is a basic brain mechanism that transforms sensory representations of others... more The mirror mechanism is a basic brain mechanism that transforms sensory representations of others' behaviour into one's own motor or visceromotor representations concerning that behaviour. According to its location in the brain, it may fulfil a range of cognitive functions, including action and emotion understanding. In each case, it may enable a route to knowledge of others' behaviour, which mainly depends on one's own motor or visceromotor representations.
The space of mirrors
New Frontiers in Mirror Neurons Research, 2015
New Trends in Geometry
New Trends in Geometry, 2011
Geometry and Theoretical Physics: The Emergence of Algebraic Geometry in Contemporary Physics Qua... more Geometry and Theoretical Physics: The Emergence of Algebraic Geometry in Contemporary Physics Quantum Gravity and Quantum Geometry The de Sitter and anti-de Sitter Universes Geometry and Topology in Relativistic Cosmology The Problem of Space in Neurosciences: Space in the Cerebral Cortex Action and Space Representation The Space Representations in the Brain The Enactive Constitution of Space Geometrical Methods in Biological Sciences: Causes and Symmetries in Natural Sciences Topological Invariants of Geometrical Surfaces and the Protein Folding Problem The Geometry of Dense Packing and Biological Structures When Topology Meets Biology 'For Life' - Remarks on how Topological Form Modulates Biological Function.
Mirror neurons and motor intentionality
Functional neurology
Our social life rests to a large extent on our ability to understand the intentions of others. Wh... more Our social life rests to a large extent on our ability to understand the intentions of others. What are the bases of this ability? A very influential view is that we understand the intentions of others because we are able to represent them as having mental states. Without this meta-representational (mind-reading) ability their behavior would be meaningless to us. Over the past few years this view has been challenged by neurophysiological findings and, in particular, by the discovery of mirror neurons. The functional properties of these neurons indicate that intentional understanding is based primarily on a mechanism that directly matches the sensory representation of the observed actions with one's own motor representation of those same actions. These findings reveal how deeply motor and intentional components of action are intertwined, suggesting that both can be fully comprehended only starting from a motor approach to intentionality.
PLoS ONE, 2009
When we observe a motor act (e.g. grasping a cup) done by another individual, we extract, accordi... more When we observe a motor act (e.g. grasping a cup) done by another individual, we extract, according to how the motor act is performed and its context, two types of information: the goal (grasping) and the intention underlying it (e.g. grasping for drinking). Here we examined whether children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) are able to understand these two aspects of motor acts. Two experiments were carried out. In the first, one group of high-functioning children with ASD and one of typically developing (TD) children were presented with pictures showing hand-object interactions and asked what the individual was doing and why. In half of the ''why'' trials the observed grip was congruent with the function of the object (''why-use'' trials), in the other half it corresponded to the grip typically used to move that object (''why-place'' trials). The results showed that children with ASD have no difficulties in reporting the goals of individual motor acts. In contrast they made several errors in the why task with all errors occurring in the ''why-place'' trials. In the second experiment the same two groups of children saw pictures showing a hand-grip congruent with the object use, but within a context suggesting either the use of the object or its placement into a container. Here children with ASD performed as TD children, correctly indicating the agent's intention. In conclusion, our data show that understanding others' intentions can occur in two ways: by relying on motor information derived from the hand-object interaction, and by using functional information derived from the object's standard use. Children with ASD have no deficit in the second type of understanding, while they have difficulties in understanding others' intentions when they have to rely exclusively on motor cues.
What type of action understanding is subserved by mirror neurons?
Neuroscience Letters, 2013
The role of the mirror mechanism in cognition remains an intriguing and hotly debated topic in co... more The role of the mirror mechanism in cognition remains an intriguing and hotly debated topic in cognitive neuroscience. Since its discovery in the monkey and human brain, many have claimed that the mirror mechanism is critically involved in understanding action. But what does understand mean here? What kind of action understanding, if any, can be ascribed to the mirror mechanism? The aim of the paper is to face these questions by providing a refined notion of both action and action understanding.
Oliver Heaviside’s “Dinner”
The Role of Mathematics in Physical Sciences
In the following pages we begin, in the first chapter, with a reappraisal of some ideas of Edouar... more In the following pages we begin, in the first chapter, with a reappraisal of some ideas of Edouard Le Roy about mathematical experience, mainly in relation with the history of complex numbers. In the second chapter we discuss in some detail the i-story, and we draw a comparison between “Imaginary Quantity” and Operational Calculus from the perspective of Heaviside's conceptions of the growth of mathematics. In the third chapter we reconstruct the δ-story, ie the Heaviside calculus leading to the constitution of a new mathematical ...
Clarifying the role of the mirror system
Neuroscience Letters, 2013
Accepted Manuscript Title: Clarifying the Role of the Mirror System Authors: Gregory Hickok, Corr... more Accepted Manuscript Title: Clarifying the Role of the Mirror System Authors: Gregory Hickok, Corrado Sinigaglia PII: S0304-3940 (12) 01486-3 DOI: doi: 10.1016/j. neulet. 2012.11. 029 Reference: NSL 29405 To appear in: Neuroscience Letters Received date: 22-10-2012 Accepted date: 14-11-2012 Please cite this article as: G. Hickok, C. Sinigaglia, Clarifying the Role of the Mirror System, Neuroscience Letters (2010), doi: 10.1016/j. neulet. 2012.11. 029 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a ...
Cognition in Action
Agency and Joint Attention, 2013
EPSA Philosophical Issues in the Sciences, 2010
Though the existence of a mirror system for action is widely accepted, its mechanism and function... more Though the existence of a mirror system for action is widely accepted, its mechanism and function are still controversial. It was originally held that the primary function of the mirror mechanism is to enable an individual to understand the actions performed by others, by directly matching the sensory with the motor representations of those actions. Recently, however, Gergely Csibra (2007) has proposed that mirror activation cannot be construed in terms of a mechanism that directly matches observed and executed motor acts, but must be based on a purely visual reconstruction of action, so that the primary mirror function would not be to understand other's actions, but to emulate them. The aim of this paper is to refute Csibra's arguments, showing that they are mostly based on a partial reading of the functional properties of mirror neurons as well as on a biased construal of both action and action understanding.
Response to de Bruin and Gallagher: embodied simulation as reuse is a productive explanation of a basic form of mind-reading
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2012
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The space of affordances: A TMS study
Neuropsychologia, 2011
Previous studies have shown a motor recruitment during the observation of graspable objects. This... more Previous studies have shown a motor recruitment during the observation of graspable objects. This recruitment has been considered crucial in encoding the observed objects in terms of one or more potential motor acts. However, an agent can actually act upon an object only when the latter is close enough to be reached. Thus, the question we deal with in this paper is whether the motor system is always activated whenever a graspable object comes into view or whether it requires the object to be located within the reachable space of the perceiver. The left primary motor cortex was magnetically stimulated and motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded while participants observed graspable and non graspable objects located within or outside their own reachable space. We found higher MEPs during the observation of graspable objects falling within the reachable space compared to the observation of either a non graspable object or a graspable object falling outside the reachable space. Our results shed new light on the functional role of the motor system in encoding visually presented objects. Indeed, they clearly indicate that its recruitment is spatially constrained, as it depends on whether the object falls within the actual reaching space of the onlooker.
Emotions in action through the looking glass1
Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2010
The paper aims at highlighting how our primary understanding of others&am... more The paper aims at highlighting how our primary understanding of others' actions is rooted in the mirror mechanism. To this end, the anatomical architecture of the mirror neuron system for action will be outlined as well as its role in grasping goals and intentions in others' motor behaviour. One further step through the looking glass of social cognition will be referring to the ubiquitous emotional colouring of actions and considering its links with the motor domain. This will allow a clearer perspective on the mechanism underlying our abilities for emotional understanding and on cases in which these abilities are amiss, as in autistic spectrum disorders.
Tie my hands, tie my eyes
Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 2011
Previous studies have demonstrated that motor abilities allow us not only to execute our own acti... more Previous studies have demonstrated that motor abilities allow us not only to execute our own actions and to predict their consequences, but also to predict others' actions and their consequences. But just how deeply are motor abilities implicated in action observation? If an observer is prevented from acting while witnessing others' actions, will this impact on their making sense of others' behavior? We recorded proactive eye movements while participants observed an actor grasping objects. The participants' hands were either freely resting on the table or tied behind their back. Proactivity of gaze behavior was dramatically impaired when participants observed others' actions with their hands tied. Since we don't literally perceive actions with our hands, the effect may be explained by the hypothesis that effective observation of action depends not only on motor abilities but on being in a position to exercise them. This suggests, for the first time, tha...
Where does an object trigger an action? An investigation about affordances in space
Experimental Brain Research, 2010
A series of experiments provide evidence that affordances rely not only on the mutual appropriate... more A series of experiments provide evidence that affordances rely not only on the mutual appropriateness of the features of an object and the abilities of an individual, but also on the fact that those features fall within her own reachable space, thus being really ready-to-her-own-hand. We used a spatial alignment effect paradigm and systematically examined this effect when the visually presented object was located either within or outside the peripersonal space of the participants, both from a metric (Experiment 1) and from a functional point of view (Experiment 2). We found that objectual features evoke actions only when the object is presented within the portion of the peripersonal space that is effectively reachable by the participants. Experiments 3 and 4 ruled out that our results could be merely accounted for by differences in the visual salience of the presented objects. Our data suggest that the power of an object to automatically trigger an action is strictly linked to the effective possibility that an individual has to interact with it.
Does how I look at what you're doing depend on what I'm doing?
Acta Psychologica, 2012
Previous studies showed that people proactively gaze at the target of another&amp... more Previous studies showed that people proactively gaze at the target of another's action by taking advantage of their own motor representation of that action. But just how selectively is one's own motor representation implicated in another's action processing? If people observe another's action while performing a compatible or an incompatible action themselves, will this impact on their gaze behaviour? We recorded proactive eye movements while participants observed an actor grasping small or large objects. The participants' right hand either freely rested on the table or held with a suitable grip a large or a small object, respectively. Proactivity of gaze behaviour significantly decreased when participants observed the actor reaching her target with a grip that was incompatible with respect to that used by them to hold the object in their own hand. This indicates that effective observation of action may depend on what one is actually doing, being actions observed best when the suitable motor representations may be readily recruited.
Dio geometrizza sempre, o almeno qualche volta
Quaderni del CeSIFeR, 2003
Dio geometrizza sempre, o almeno qualche volta / G. Giorello, C. Sinigaglia. - In: Quaderni del C... more Dio geometrizza sempre, o almeno qualche volta / G. Giorello, C. Sinigaglia. - In: Quaderni del CeSIFeR. - (2003), pp. 1-15. ... There are no files associated with this item. ... Items in AIR are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. ... ICT Support, development & maintenance are provided by the AePIC team @ CILEA. Powered on DSpace Software.
Cronwell, Pascal, de Finetti. Brevi note su fallibilismo e probabilità
I Mercoledì delle Accademie Napoletane nell’Anno accademico 2002-2003, 2004
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Papers by Corrado Sinigaglia