ABSTRACT
Introduction The notion that actions are intrinsically linked to perception was proposed by William James, who claimed, “every mental representation of a movement awakens to some degree the actual movement which is its object” (James 1890). The implication is that observing, imagining, or in anyway representing an action excites the motor program used to execute that same action (Jeannerod 1994; Prinz 1997). Interest in this idea has grown recently, in part due to the neurophysiological discovery of “mirror” neurons. Mirror neurons discharge not only during action execution but also during action observation, which has led many to suggest that these neurons are the substrate for action understanding.
