Mirror Neurons In the early 1990s, a team of neuroscientists at the University of Parma made a surprising discovery: Certain groups of neurons in the brains of macaque monkeys fired not only when a monkey performed an action – grabbing an apple out of a box, for instance – but also when the monkey watched someone else performing that action; and even when the monkey heard someone performing the action in another room. Even though these “mirror neurons” were part of the brain’s motor system, they seemed to be correlated not with specific movements, but with specific goals. This special neuons help people empathise and some researchers claim there is a link between mirror neuron deficiency and autism. Electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings of individuals with autism show a dysfunctional mirror neuron system: Their mirror neurons respond only to what they do and not to the doings of others. There is now significant evidence that humans have an auditory mirror neuron system that responds both when we perform actions and when we hear the sounds of those actions being performed by others. In one study, for example, researchers contrasted the brain activity of expert pianists and nonmusicians. In the first part of the experiment, both groups of participants listened to piano music, and in another, they pressed random keys on a piano keyboard that was rigged so that it would not produce any sound. In each situation, participants brains were scanned using an fMRI machine. The results (shown below2, with pianists on the left and nonmusicians on the right) showed that when listening to piano music, pianists, but not nonmusicians, activated some of the same regions that were active while playing the piano keyboard.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 20:48:45 +0000
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