Summary

alization and mentalization but that lack mirror proper-ties are more active when the action occurs in an implausible context. However, no differential activa-tion was found in the mirror network. Our findings sup-port the assumption that action understanding in novel situations is primarily mediated by an inferential interpretive system rather than the mirror system. [‘‘global’’] intentions of others’ ’ in which ‘‘intention’ ’ is in-terpreted ‘‘to indicate the ‘why ’ of an action’ ’ [6, 7]. The alternative to the motor-simulation account assumes that action understanding is at its core an inferential pro-cess that assigns a goal to an action by evaluating its efficiency as an optimal means of obtaining the goal within the specific constraints of the situation [5, 8, 15]. This model assumes that the neural mechanisms of ac