The absence of relevant mirror neurons, he suggests, means the absence of theory of mind.
The first mirror neurons discovered (in the brains of monkeys) were concerned with predicting movement.
For one thing, mirror neurons are good for representing actions--which, in an abstract way, is what sentences do.
In human beings, it was found that mirror neurons not only simulate actions, they also reflect intentions and feelings.
These so-called "mirror neurons" might have given apes the mental power necessary to recognize subtle differences in hand gestures.
Much of Ramachandran's work since developing mirror therapy has focused on mirror neurons.
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Even if Slocombe and Zuberbuhler are correct, mirror neurons may still have played an important part in the evolution of communication.
The neuroscience behind limbic synchrony has everything to do with the discovery of mirror neurons and how empathy develops in the brain.
The discovery of mirror neurons means that we can understand precisely how humans empathize and share emotions with one another for the first time.
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And it turns out that some of the regions where monkeys have mirror neurons correspond to areas of the human brain that handle language.
The natural model for learning, largely based on the power of mirror neurons, came from watching and imitating others, then repeating the action over and over.
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Vilayanur Ramachandran, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, thinks he may have found that mechanism: a failure of what are known as mirror neurons.
What's more, mirror neurons have also been linked to our ability to get inside other people's heads and understand their intentions--something that chimpanzees can barely do, if at all.
Alternatively, so-called "mirror neurons, " located on the opposite side of the brain from the damaged area, can become involved in roles that the injured region used to have, he said.
Dr Ramachandran suggested the amputees "felt" the actions of others because their missing limb provided no feedback to prevent their mirror neurons being stimulated, and therefore not telling them they were not "literally" being touched.
Marco Iacoboni, a lab director at the UCLA Brain Mapping Center, says when people see a smile, so-called mirror neurons fire in their brain and evoke a similar neural response as if they were smiling themselves.
Dr Iacoboni discovered that the mirror neurons involved in grasping the intentions of others are in part of the right hemisphere that corresponds to Broca's area in the left hemisphere, and both also correspond with mirror-neuron sites in monkeys.
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