Mirror Neurons: strengthening or weakening their case?

In Nature, Vol. 452/17 (April 2008), in section Books & Arts, p.814, V.S.Ramachandran reviews "Mirrors in the Brain", a book by G.Rizzolatti and C.Sinigaglia printed by the Oxford University Press. Commenting on the so-called mirror neuron system (MNS), Ramachandran warns against speculative excesses. Indeed the MNS paradigm is becoming main stream in communication media and even an important feature to issues of public health policy, e.g. autism (see J. Electromyography and Kinesiology Vol.22, Issue1, Feb. 2012), neuro-rehabilitation, behavioural sciences(empathy, etc.). In their zeal to support MNS, the book's authors seem to even force some published results: their figs. 5.9, 5.10, that are admittedly taken from Buccino et al. (J Cogn Neurosci. 2004 Jan-Feb;16(1):114-26)), have been altered with respect to the original, in that the red yellow areas have been sensibly modified. Those figures summarise functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging results on subjects watching silent videos (e.g., man biting or speaking, monkey biting or lip-smacking, dog biting or barking), highlighting (i) effective MNS-based comprehension of another's action between con-specific subjects, (ii) less so between humans and monkeys, and (iii) poor between humans and dogs. The new figures published in the book, obviously addressed to general public, do support MNS, certainly more strongly so than Buccino et Alii's original figures (see also Rivista Medica S4. Vol. 14, 2008, and PLoS One. 2012;7(6):e39145). Given the potential importance of the experiments described in the book for the MNS paradigm, the discrepancy pointed out above calls for deeper studies in order to remove any ambiguity in the data analysis and interpretation.