  It has been well established in the past decades that the central black hole
masses of galaxies correlate with dynamical properties of their harbouring
bulges. This notion begs the question of whether there are causal connections
between the AGN and its immediate vicinity in the host galaxy. In this paper we
analyse the presence of circumnuclear star formation in a sample of 15 AGN
using mid-infrared observations. The data consist of a set of 11.3{\mm} PAH
emission and reference continuum images, taken with ground based telescopes,
with sub-arcsecond resolution. By comparing our star formation estimates with
AGN accretion rates, derived from X-ray luminosities, we investigate the
validity of theoretical predictions for the AGN-starburst connection. Our main
results are: i) circumnuclear star formation is found, at distances as low as
tens of parsecs from the nucleus, in nearly half of our sample (7/15); ii) star
formation luminosities are correlated with the bolometric luminosity of the AGN
($L_{AGN}$) only for objects with $L_{AGN} \ge 10^{42}\,\,{\rm erg\,\,s^{-1}}$;
iii) low luminosity AGNs ($L_{AGN} < 10^{42}\,\,{\rm erg\,\,s^{-1}}$) seem to
have starburst luminosities far greater than their bolometric luminosities.
