Mirror mechanism is a basic neural mechanism that transforms sensory representations of others’ actions into motor representations of the same actions in the brain of the observer. In the first part of my talk I will describe the functions of the mirror mechanism located in the parieto-fontal network of monkeys and humans. I will show that this mechanism enables one to understand others in an immediate, phenomenological way, without recourse to cognitive inferential processing. In the second part of my talk I will discuss the role of the mirror mechanism in understanding basic Darwinian emotions. The data on emotions will lead me to the last part of my talk where I will present stereo-EEG data on action and emotion recognition. I will conclude discussing the clinical application of the mirror mechanism (action observation therapy, AOT)