An example of faulty binding between emotion and action seems to happen when an autistic acquaintance of mine asks if he is smiling when I try to take photographs of him in a group. He is a high functioning and quite self sufficient person with a responsible job, but he has trouble with appropriateness in social interactions, both written and face-to-face if he doesn't "act" as he has learned and been taught. He seems quite genuine when he asks about smiling and says "I do not know if my face is smiling. Is it smiling now?". Could this be a failure of function of the visual mirror neurons and their role in binding emotion to action? I would be interested in how your work could account for his behaviour.
