# Juicy_Intentions_Synthese_Resubmit **Keywords:** Animal Cognition, Cingulate Neurons, Goal, Intention, Joint Action. WORD COUNT: 7​ **Opening (not a real abstract):** This paper explores the neural underpinnings of joint distal intentions in nonhuman animals. Joint distal intentions are defined as mental representations of shared goals to which plans are directed. R ​esearchers have long known that mirror neurons get activated when an agent performs or observe others performing the very same action (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia 2010). But evidence for what may be the neural underpinnings of predictive mechanisms that guide animal social behaviour has so far only been hypothesised. The question is: in nonhuman social interactions, is observable action understanding and non-observable action understanding (distal intentions) served by the same neural circuits? Harousch and Williams (2015) discovered, for the first time, the existence of neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex that predict another **Authors:** [[Angelica Kaufmann]]