ABSTRACT
The most influential empirical discovery regarding empathy is the discovery of so-called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are single-cell neurons that activate during both the execution of certain actions and the observation of those actions. The chapter provides a brief overview of the empirical research on mirror neurons. It focuses on claims about action mirroring, which have garnered the most attention in the literature. The chapter discusses the claims about emotion mirroring and the uptake for the subject of empathy more generally, with the goal of trying to clarify what "empathy" might mean in the context of these claims. In particular, it has been speculated that mirroring forms the basis of everything from imitation, language acquisition, action understanding, and empathy. The chapter argues that observing emotion, in addition to mirroring, leads to gaze following, and, in turn, a closely associated representation of the attentional object of emotion.
