yes, bargh's work was exactly what i had in mind. i'm curious of any interaction with mirror neurons and phenomena like priming. it seems like an obvious suspect to me as a primary mechanism, though i could see a lot more getting under the gatekeeper's supervision...

did you see the short movie based on priming i made with naomi bock?

colorhythm.com/primegreen/

thanks for this article cite. i'll track it down at UCSF. damn articles for $28! it's enough to make me wanna go cyberpunk on their asses...

there is a growing body of researchers trying to make claims to link mirroring with affective states. this is where some of the autism connections start to tie it together. from an anatomical point of view, you have the ventral premotor cortex link to the amygdala through the insular cortex - these have all been implicated in an affective mirroring network.

in regards to mirror neurons being primarily motor - keep in mind that is their only form of output. they reside in a fairly high level area of cortex that receives all kinds of multimodal information. think about what you need to program a series of motions to complete something as simple as grasping an object (which is what most of the macaque studies centered around) you need proprioceptive feedback, visual and perhaps auditory to guide your movement, information about the object from both visual streams - location (dorsal-parietal flow) and identify (ventral - temporal flow) which tells you what types of interactions you can have with an object in the form of grip shape (precision, whole hand grasp etc..) and this all shapes a series of motor output. the network to program a simple movement is incredibly complex and we still haven't got that one down quite right. making a network of affective states........forget about a good one for now.

for those interested in reading more about mirror neurons, this is the class page for a course i'm currently taking. articles not from pineda's book are linked to directly from the website (should be free of charge for those non-academics - if not, message me and i'll hook you up) www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~pineda/...ndex.html

blue-j, could you elaborate more on the link you're suggesting between priming effects and mirroring? there is definitely a component of 'motor repertoire' for mirroring in that observing movements you are already experienced/capable of doing will causes larger BOLD responses in fMRI, but that I get the sense you aren't talk about experience effects.