There are two theories as to how the brain develops its ability to predict people's actions.

One, "theory theory", argued that it was due to logical processes. But the other, "simulation theory", is the idea that we put ourselves in the shoes of other people to guess what they will do.

This means we will use the same area of the brain when predicting others' actions as when we plan our own - and this is what the Dutch scientists have found.

They scanned people's brains under two conditions - both while they were planning actions and while they were predicting the actions of another person - and found the same area of the brain lit up under both.