More on the mirror "hearing-doing" system

Here is a more extended commentary on a paper I mentioned in my Jan. 30 post "The pianist in the mirror.." D'Ausilio (PDF here) discusses this work of Lahav et al. showing an auditory mirror area in the left inferior frontal gyrus for complex and newly acquired actions. In addition to rote auditory-motor mapping for learning and online execution control, this mirror mechanism might subserve other evolutionary critical functions like action recognition, and interindividual emotional resonance. This auditory mirror-like property seems indeed to be valid for a wide range of functions that in turn elicit very different behaviors.