``I'll search for the references on neurological data that I've read but notice I did not state anything about a localized empathy center. I specifically wrote "areas of the brain" since the areas stimulated are scattered. Something like 5 to 7 key sites in the brain that correspond between the subjects studied.'' John Thornton
---------
The wikipedia article covers the basics along with an image for location purposes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neurons
Mirror neurons are neurons that fire or show heighten electrical activity when the subject watches another person perform a goal related action, hence the term, mirror, mirroring the action. This sets up the theory that we can learn by watching or listening. It also sets up the theory that we can understand another's feelings or state and anticipate their actions, as long as that state is overtly expressed, through the same neuro-physiological link.
Mirror neurons are located in an area homologous (common embryonic origin) with Broca's area in the premotor cortex. While Broca's area is mostly left-hemisphere, its analogue in the right hemisphere processes the emotive content or context of language and has its own mirror neuron complex associated with it. Interestingly, the sign language deaf show the same developmental process and in the same areas including left hemisphere dominance.
Mirror neurons, Broca's and Werneke's area have primate precusors.
In addition there is what is called the FOXP2 gene which is expressed during infancy and early childhood and is thought to facilitate early brain and lung tissue development. Defects and or mutations in this gene inhibit speaking and processing language and result in retardation (as a possible secondary consequence). Go here for more detail:
http://www.evolutionpages.com/FOXP2_language.htm
FOXP2 is present in primates (also mice) and is critical to the proper development of both mirror neurons and Broca's area.
So, I just when nuts in speculation, which I enjoy. I think what we have in some permutation of the above is a pretty good start on the mental and physiological architecture for language and mind.
The key is understanding the social-cultural-symbolic potential of an empathic mind, a mind constructed basically on imitation and perceptual conditioning on share mental states.
Here is a paper that attempts to integrate a lot of these ideas into a theory of speech development in psychology:
http://www2.psy.uq.edu.au/CogPsych/Noetica/OpenForumIssue9/
Next you have to turn to cultural anthropology in order to understand how such a developmental psychology creates a mythological mind through its innate and learned uses of empathy.
What's important is that this empathic facility can be used to interpret not just other people, social context, and give language meaning but also the natural world of animals, plants, and the eco-system itself. This is the basic thesis in Levi-Strauss (in The Savage Mind). In its simplest form an empathic mind or mythologial mind personifies or anthropomorphizes nature in order to understand it, communicate with it, command it, classify it, intrepret it, and make use of it. It is a systematic projection of the human consciousness onto the world. Just as such human societies were ordered on kinship and divided in hierachies of clans, so to their environment with its animals, plants, and seasons were also divided and ordered.
The important part here is not whether animals are like people, but that people think they are. In pre-modern societies people constructed their societies around such ideas through what we now call mythological thinking, which in turn has its foundation in an empathic mind.
CG