![]() Since then, most studies on the human mirror-neuron system have used some sort of neuroimaging, generally functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI). They found that these potentials matched the potentials recorded when the participants actually grasped objects themselves. 6, pages 2,608-2,611), Rizzolatti and neuroscientist Luciano Fadiga, MD, PhD, now at the University of Ferrara, recorded motor-evoked potentials-a signal that a muscle is ready to move-from participants' hand muscles as the participants watched the experimenter grasp objects. In a 1995 paper in the Journal of Neurophysiology (Vol. Instead, the first human mirror neuron study examined hand-muscle twitching. But they couldn't record activity from single neurons in humans the way that they could in monkeys, because doing so requires attaching electrodes directly to the brain. Once the researchers identified mirror neurons in monkeys, the next step was to look for them in humans. "But we were in the right area to find them." From monkeys to humans "We were lucky, because there was no way to know such neurons existed," says Rizzollati. 2, pages 593-609), they dubbed their discovery "mirror neurons." Four years later, in a paper in Brain (Vol. The researchers wrote about their unexpected finding in a 1992 paper in Experimental Brain Research (Vol. A mirror neuron that fired when, say, the monkey grasped a peanut would also fire only when the experimenter grasped a peanut, while a neuron that fired when the monkey put a peanut in its mouth would also fire only when the experimenter put a peanut in his own mouth. The researchers found that individual neurons would only respond to very specific actions. Even more surprisingly, these were the same neurons that would also fire when the monkey itself grasped the peanut. ![]() They quickly noticed something surprising: When they picked up an object-say, a peanut-to hand it to the monkey, some of the monkey's motor neurons would start to fire. The researchers wanted to learn more about how these neurons responded to different objects and actions, so they used electrodes to record activity from individual F5 neurons while giving the monkeys different objects to handle. In the 1980s, Rizzolatti and his colleagues had found that some neurons in an area of macaque monkeys' premotor cortex called F5 fired when the monkeys did things like reach for or bite a peanut. The discovery of mirror neurons owes as much to serendipity as to skill. And researchers are just beginning to branch out from the motor cortex to try to figure out where else in the brain these neurons might reside. Researchers haven't yet been able to prove that humans have individual mirror neurons like monkeys, although they have shown that humans have a more general mirror system. Ramachandran, PhD, has called the discovery of mirror neurons one of the "single most important unpublicized stories of the decade."īut that story is just at its beginning. Over the past decade, more research has suggested that mirror neurons might help explain not only empathy, but also autism ( see page 52) and even the evolution of language ( see page 54). The concept might be simple, but its implications are far-reaching. If watching an action and performing that action can activate the same parts of the brain in monkeys-down to a single neuron-then it makes sense that watching an action and performing an action could also elicit the same feelings in people. Neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti, MD, who with his colleagues at the University of Parma first identified mirror neurons, says that the neurons could help explain how and why we "read" other people's minds and feel empathy for them. They were first discovered in the early 1990s, when a team of Italian researchers found individual neurons in the brains of macaque monkeys that fired both when the monkeys grabbed an object and also when the monkeys watched another primate grab the same object. Mirror neurons are a type of brain cell that respond equally when we perform an action and when we witness someone else perform the same action. Now, some researchers believe that a recent discovery called mirror neurons might provide a neuroscience-based answer to those questions. How do we understand, so immediately and instinctively, their thoughts, feelings and intentions? Suddenly, your own stomach turns at the thought of the meal.įor years, such experiences have puzzled psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers, who've wondered why we react at such a gut level to other people's actions. ![]() Or you see a woman sniff some unfamiliar food and wrinkle her nose in disgust. Or you're watching a race, and you feel your own heart racing with excitement as the runners vie to cross the finish line first. You're walking through a park when out of nowhere, the man in front of you gets smacked by an errant Frisbee. ![]()
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