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Active perception and perceiving action : The Shared Circuits Hypothesis - Hurley

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        <i>Recently research on imitation and its role in social cognition has been flourishing 
        across various disciplines. After briefly reviewing these developments under the headings 
        of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation, I advance the </i>
      
      
        <i><b>shared circuits hypothesis</b></i>
      
      
        <i>. This hypothesis about subpersonal functional architecture describes a unified 
        framework for the mechanisms that enable control, imitation, and simulation, which makes 
        explicit the relationships among them. It should have heuristic value in sharpening up 
        questions and predictions at both higher, personal and lower, neural levels, while 
        avoiding over-simple or a priori assumptions of isomorphism between the subpersonal and 
        personal levels. A striking aspect of the shared circuits hypothesis is the way it 
        connects a shared information space for action and perception with a shared information 
        space for self and other, while at the same time illustrating how the distinctions between 
        self and other, and between the imagined and the real, can be overlaid on these shared 
        information spaces. In this model information about intentional agents arrives in the 
        first person plural: without distinction or inference between self and other. The shared 
        circuits hypothesis also illustrates a horizontally modular architecture: it avoids the 
        common conception of perception and action as separate and peripheral to central 
        cognition. Rather, it views perception and action as dynamically co-constituted and shows 
        how cognitively significant resources, such as distinctions between self and other and 
        between the imagined and the real, and information for action understanding and planning, 
        might emerge from the information space that action and perception</i>
      
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        <i>share.</i>
      
      
        
      
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