Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 114, Issue 12, Pages 3258-3263Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1620764114
Keywords
mirror self-recognition; rhesus monkey; bodily self-consciousness; visual-proprioceptive association; instrumental mirror use
Categories
Funding
- MoST 973 Program of China [2011CBA00400]
- Strategic Priority Research Program of the CAS [XDB02020100]
- CAS Youth Innovation Promotion Association
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Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is generally considered to be an intrinsic cognitive ability found only in humans and a few species of great apes. Rhesus monkeys do not spontaneously show MSR, but they have the ability to use a mirror as an instrument to find hidden objects. The mechanism underlying the transition from simple mirror use to MSR remains unclear. Here we show that rhesus monkeys could show MSR after learning precise visual-proprioceptive association for mirror images. We trained head-fixed monkeys on a chair in front of a mirror to touch with spatiotemporal precision a laser pointer light spot on an adjacent board that could only be seen in the mirror. After several weeks of training, when the same laser pointer light was projected to the monkey's face, a location not used in training, all three trained monkeys successfully touched the face area marked by the light spot in front of a mirror. All trained monkeys passed the standard face mark test for MSR both on the monkey chair and in their home cage. Importantly, distinct from untrained control monkeys, the trained monkeys showed typical mirror-induced self-directed behaviors in their home cage, such as using the mirror to explore normally unseen body parts. Thus, bodily self-consciousness may be a cognitive ability present in many more species than previously thought, and acquisition of precise visual-proprioceptive association for the images in the mirror is critical for revealing the MSR ability of the animal.
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