Social affordances, mirror neurons, and how to understand the social brain

Gibson’s notion of affordances refers to the opportunities for action that the environment offers, and that the organism can act upon. A good decade later, the discovery of mirror neurons (MNs) in rhesus macaques demonstrated that motor sequences are best viewed as actions (grasping) because they are organized by high-level goals (e.g., eating food) rather than by the physics of the effectors. The notion of affordance may resonate with MN researchers because it fits the idea that movements are organized as ensembles best defined by the agents’ intention rather than by agent-independent physical properties. Recently, Bonini et al. [ 1. Bonini L. et al. Mirror neurons 30 years later: implications and applications. Trends Cogn. Sci. 2022; 26: 767-781 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (25) Google Scholar ] extended MN research on instrumental actions in the physical world to social interactions and linked MNs to a social affordance framework, placing the perception of conspecifics (‘others’) at the center. MNs and social affordance theory have been criticized for lack of clarity [ 2. Heyes C. Catmur C. What happened to mirror neurons?. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 2022; 17: 153-168 Crossref PubMed Scopus (50) Google Scholar ]: does combining them promise a step forward in understanding the social brain?