Humans have an inherent tendency to infer other people's intentions from th
eir actions. Here we review psychophysical and functional neuroimaging evid
ence that biological motion is processed as a special category, from which
we automatically infer mental states such as intention. The mechanism under
lying the attribution of intentions to actions might rely on simulating the
observed action and mapping it onto representations of our own intentions.
There is accumulating neurophysiological evidence to support a role for ac
tion simulation in the brain.