"Mirror cells" May Be Key To Communication

tag writes "New Scientist has an article discussing 'mirror cells' -- neurons that fire both when you perform an action and when you observe someone else performing that action. Researches think this explains how we 'judge intentions and feelings' and may 'answer important questions about human evolution, language and culture.' The article links to an essay by one of the researchers."

is this ,,,

Definately explains why I flinch when someone gets kicked in the crotch.

Well...

"...neurons that fire both when you perform an action and when you observe someone else performing that action."

I guess that explains the appeal in porn.

Well, hot damn.

Sounds like we figured out empathy. Now tell me how the hell we're supposed to detect replicants.

Deja vu, etc.

This must be where deja vu [dictionary.com] comes from.

But deja vu evokes such subtle, inexplicable emotions from the strangest things.

How do these recognition patterns work? I dispute the fact that our recognition is based on something as simple and easily broken down as individual visual moments.

I think there is a uniqueness to everyone's interpretation of the world, and that it is probably a mistake to put so much emphasis on recognition cues picked up from others. I don't want to get mystical here (unless you consider psychology mystical) but the very act of recognition can be fraught with psychological connotations, provoking memories and associations.

People who have sexual fetishes, for instance, get a sexual response to contact with certain items or materials. For them, certain items are associated with things that usually have nothing to do with their original purpose. How could this happen if our communication, and the meaning of things in the outside world, comes entirely from other people?

Media violence

While I'm personally more of a "free speech" type and dislike the efforts being made to cut down on "violent" television, movies, games, etc., this research does provide ammunition for arguments that could be used as another link between media violence and real violence. Besides the traditional desensitization, this seems to indicate that stabbing someone and watching someone get stabbed would both trigger some common neurons.

I'm curious, however, if they are differences in the mirror neuron activation between a real-world event and an event watched on television. If there's a lesser mirroring effect with a two-dimensional image, that might serve to at least partially deflect the arguments against media violence that refer to mirror neurons.

Interesting

This is interesting, because there are neurological disorders in which people are unable to attribute mental states to other people (Autism) and there hasn't been a really good explination for the problem. One person wrote a book called "Mindblindness" which discussed the very problem, and his answer was a theory of mind that was compartmentalized, meaning that there were different parts of the brain that performed specific fucntions, and that an autistic person brain was missing or had problems with that particular region.

However, if there are cells like this, it would go further in explaining this problem as well as possibly diagnosing it. If these cells are clustered in one area of the brain, it would go a long way to showing that the brain is compartmentalized in that way, vs. being more of a pure neural network kind of idea that others believe.

This discovery may have very severe impacts on the philosophy of mind and discussions of Neuroscience. The problem of "other minds" has long been an issue for the eliminative materialist, and such a cell's discovery gives them something to talk about when a cartesial dualist asks them about it.

Experimental artefact.

I think that the real reason that these neural signals seem so "novel" to the researchers is because the signals are actually not present at all. It is more likely that the signals that the researchers measured were artefacts. Due to the huge density of neurons in the cortex (they were measuring signals in the frontal cortex), there is a real risk that a poorly designed configuration of recording electrodes could measure local currents from neighbouring regions of the cortex. These local currents could easily be incorrectly attributed to the existance of "mirror cells".

There is no functionality provided by these supposed "mirror cells" that can not be explained by the already well documented phenomenon of "conditioned response". If mirror cells really did exist, do you seriously suppose that in over 100 years of electroencephalography no-one would have detected them before? I am confident that this reasearch will be proved to be fundamentally flawed upon deeper investigation.

Required for meme replication?

Susan Blackmore's excellent book, The Meme Machine, proposes the idea that imitation (of specific actions or behaviours) is at the heart of meme replication. The idea is that you see or hear someone humming a certain tune, and that meme hops neatly into your brain; imitation is the key, i.e. your brain now makes you able to hum the same tune, even if you don't do it straight away. The same arguments apply to art, language, music, and trolling on Slashdot :)

The interesting bit is that her hypothesis has generated testable predictions, including one that specific brain mechanisms would be found that support imitation. It looks like mirror neurons are such a mechanism, supporting her ideas.

Amazon.com has some interesting review comments on this book, see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019286212X/

I suspect a troll, but I'll bite.

"Urban existentialist?" (As distinct from what, the old rural variety of the Parisian left bank in the 50's? I'm trying to imagine Kojeve, Sartre, Jaspers and company in an episode of Green Acres, but it isn't working.) I suspect either a troll, or terminal pretentiousness. But I'll answer anyway:

Just because we understand how something is implemented, doesn't mean that it is any less authentic an experience. You probably had a sort of folk-theory about the mechanisms for conscious experience - that there was some non-material substance, a "soul" that somehow recieved material information. That model is pretty shopworn at this point. But just because these experiences are essentially implemented by neurological processes, rather than by effects on a little "homonculus of light," doesn't really change the experience.

For those of us who have studed neuroscience, the 'bunches of neurons firing' are, themselves, beautiful and awe-inspiring.

Re:Interesting

Actually, there have been some very good explanations for mental states along the lines of autism. Generally, it is a failure of the part of the brain which allows people to shift their attention quickly. Since the "tells" of a person's mood are often subtle, brief, and varied, a person who has difficutly shifting the focus of their attention tends to have a problem with empathy.

Slashdot has, on occation in the past, linked to studies that showed that the sort of people who are usually known as "nerds" are likely to suffer from a mild form of this disorder. The lack of easy empathy makes them social outcasts, but the slowly-shifting focus allows them to stay up all night hacking code while heavy metal blares in the background to keep their heart rates up.

The average non-nerd, even if fairly bright, is less likely to stare at a flickering cathode ray for hours at the best of times, let alone when distracted by loud music.

The rare "idiot savant" cases have also been linked with this phenomenon.

Re:Media violence

Besides the traditional desensitization, this seems to indicate that stabbing someone and watching someone get stabbed would both trigger some common neurons.

It all depends on how you look at it. To my mind, this could just as easily be an argument for *more* violence in media (if there's anyone who is a proponent of that) - watching someone get stabbed activates the same neurons as getting stabbed yourself, and increases your empathy towards victims of violence.

All in all, I think it probably balances out to a moot point in terms of violence on TV.

Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore

The real question

The real question is whether or not the observed neural firing is actually some genetically hardwired process in the brain, part of the underlying archetecture of consciousness... or whether it is instead merely an emergent and learned behavior.

The fact that a experimentally verifiable pattern can be measured does not necessarily demonstrate whether or not the ability is genetically determined. Put electrodes in the cortex of someone doing advanced calculus, and you will likely see a repeatable firing of certain neurons in correlation to certain mathematical notions., even though the symbolic system of math is entirely a cultural construction.

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Involuntary movements

Anyone else here find themselves dodging their heads when playing video games like Doom? When watching others play?

My wife laughs at me when my boys wrestle. I'm twisting and feinting in what I think they should be doing. The bad part is that I don't even realize that I'm doing it.