Interpersonal Coordination and Mirror Neurons:

An Overview of Nonverbal Interaction as Symmetry Formation and Symmetry Breaking

Steven M. Boker, Psychology

This talk outlines a framework to link findings from neuroscience concerning a population of so-called ``mirror neurons" to findings from the study of interpersonal coordination in human dyads. Rizzolatti and colleagues have reported a population of neurons in macaques that respond both when an action sequence is performed by the monkey and when the monkey visually perceives another primate performing the same action sequence. This mirror correspondence suggests that spatiotemporal symmetry may play a special role in human communication since the homologous brain area in humans corresponds to Broca's area, implicated in language production. Information theory considers spatiotemporal symmetry to be redundancy: the opposite of information. For information transfer to occur on a communications line, redundancy must occur between the input and the output. Acknowledgment involves a partial transfer of redundancy back along the line from output to input. Thus we may expect observable short term spatiotemporal symmetries to form in coupled perception-action systems that comprise dyadic communication. This talk will discuss results and experiments in progress that examine spatiotemporal symmetry formation and symmetry breaking in human interaction.