prosthetic fingers...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/11novel.html
artificial hand... (prosthetic fingers). pretty cool!

"Boom! Hok! A Monkey Language Is Deciphered"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/science/08monkey.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Monkey is actually speaking!!! ???

interesting...

one more interesting point would be,

we analyze all the video/audio input and speak a lot about the understanding,

while other animals can analyze a lot of input but speaking not so much about it...

is it because their understanding is worse than ours? or just syntax is not enough?

or their memory system is worse?

think about "a dog never barks about yesterdays' burglar." (it might be not so true though)

- H. Choi

mirror neurons and motor theory

"Thus, to this point, whereas the exact nature of the link between speech production and perception remains to be discovered, existing evidence strongly indicates that perceptual systems have a much stronger influence on production than motor systems have on perception."

"We conclude that, rather than providing support for MT, mirror neurons are actually inconsistent with MT and are unlikely to have a central role in speech perception."

from A. J. Lotto, G. S. Hickok and L. L. Holt, "Reflections on mirror neurons and speech perception," Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.13 No.3, 2009. pp 110-114. 

so, how about other perception tasks rather than speech? 

still motor theory is attractive for perception at least to me, and mirror neuron theory seems like a bridge between motor theory and perception. 

- H. Choi