SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
The Mind Is a Mirror
from Scientific American
The discovery of mirror neurons in the brains of macaques about ten years ago sent shockwaves through the neuroscience community. Mirror neurons are cells that fire both when a monkey performs a certain task and when it observes another individual performing that same task.
With the identification of networks of similarly-behaving cells in humans, there was much speculation over the role such neurons might play in phenomena such as imitation, language acquisition, observational learning, empathy, and theory of mind.
Several research groups have observed the activity of mirror neuron networks indirectly in humans through the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). ... Experiments using fMRI have demonstrated that there is more activation in the human mirror system when people observe movements with which they are familiar. ...
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