From Wikipedia: "A mirror neuron is a neuron which fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another (especially conspecific) animal.[1] Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of another animal, as though the observer were itself acting. These neurons have been directly observed in primates, and are believed to exist in humans and other species including birds. In humans, brain activity consistent with mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex and the inferior parietal cortex."
The thing that fascinated me about mirror neurons is that they fire in a person when they observe someone else being touched and it is the touch neurons in the skin that veto the input of the mirror neurons. That has to be a learned behavior.
I filed that little tidbit away for future pondering and moved on to something else. Then a few days later while I was practicing my Mandarin I found myself trying to feel how the words should feel if I'd said them the way my coach, Jiang, had said them. The experience was both tactical and mental/visual. Eureka! I was trying to pull the data created by the mirror neurons to help me properly pronounce the words!
It seems everywhere I looked there was a little reference to mirror neurons and I found myself stopping to read all kinds of things
As an aside -- I think it's interesting how subjects like that can be out there seemingly invisible until someone we know tell us about them -- and then we them everywhere. I was that way about forsythia bushes for years -- seeing them but not taking much interest because I didn't have any context with which to connect them in my thought stream. But I digress
It turns out that there is a fair bit of discussion and debate about the role of mirror neurons in language acquistion. There was a recent Nova episode on mirror neurons that was pretty interesting.
Some research suggests that the mirror neurons not only allow you to experience what the other person is experiencing but you may actually feel what they feel emotionally. "Mirror neurons can send message to the limbic or emotional systems in our brain." Does this scienfictically explain the Hallmark moment?
I bumped into a fair bit of discussion about mirror neurons and how they function (or malfunction) in people with autism. It seems that their mirror neuron system is impaired in some way. I found a lecture by @marcoiacoboni (video podcast from the UC-Davis) titled
Hypothesis on the Link between Mirror Neurons and Autism
Since listening to his lecture, I've connected with him on Twitter and learned he has a new book titled "Mirroring People". I'm going to pick it up today. I'm anxious to read the chapters on autism and language learning. I'm also anxious to see if he's looked at the role of mirror neurons in VR and social media "stickiness"
Here are some key quotes I've been playing with:
"Heathy human beings are intensely social. We invent ways to connect with one another."
"Deep in our cells we are meant to be together. There would be no point in having a mirror system if we were not meant to interact with one another."
"Deep in our cells we are meant to be together. There would be no point in having a mirror system if we were not meant to interact with one another."
V.C. Ramashandra (another researcher in the field) says - Some time ago in human evolution mirror neurons got dramatically better and as a result, human development accelerated because we didn't have to wait for hundreds or thousands of tiny evolutionary changes and natural selection. We could adopt successful strategies within a generation and we didn't have to experience a failure to learn from it.
This discovery should have great implications on education, autism therapy, stroke victim therapy, artificial limb development and virtual reality platforms.
The subject is probably something I'm going to prattle on about for some time to come.
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