( nd actions were heard or performed. In ...)Mirrors in the mind: New studies elucidate how the brain reflects onto itself the actions of others

Intriguingly, the researchers also found that of the subjects taking part in the experiment, those that scored higher on tests for empathy activated the system more strongly than those who scored lower on the empathy evaluation. While the relationship between motor mirror systems and empathy skills is far from clear, these findings are consistent with the existence of a link between the two.

Though mirror neurons appear to relate--and, potentially, equate--the actions of oneself with those of another, we are in fact highly adept at distinguishing our own actions from those of someone else. The basis for this distinction is explored in the study reported by Simone Schütz-Bosbach, Patrick Haggard, and colleagues, who used an established method--the so-called rubber-hand illusion--for experimentally manipulating the sense of body ownership. This approach was useful because without such illusion, it is difficult to identify meaningful differences in how the brain responds to actions performed by oneself or others--the two scenarios involve significant differences in, for example, visual viewpoint and familiarity, and other sensory inputs.

Past work had used the rubber-hand illusion to show that when a rubber hand is seen being stroked at the same time that the viewer's own (unseen) hand is synchronously stroked, the viewer feels that the rubber hand becomes part of his or her body.

In the new work, the researchers used this illusion--though in this case, the rubber hand was replaced by a real hand of an experimenter--to control whether a subject experienced that an experimenter's hand was the subject's own or not.
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Source:Cell Press