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In the heady realm of neuroscience, which has seen rapid advances in recent years, Dr. V. S. Ramachandran belongs to that select group of researchers who study the brain to find out how the mind works. From his home in San Diego, Ramachandran spoke to Khabar about his groundbreaking work, which continues to make a deep impression.
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Mirror neurons represent a distinctive class of neurons that discharge both when the monkey executes a motor act and when it observes another individual (a human being or another monkey) performing the same or a similar motor act
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the effective visual stimulus is the observation of a hand interacting with an object
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"The idea that these particular cells might underlie a fundamental human impulse reflects the emergence of a new scientific myth. Like a traditional myth, it captures intuitions about the human condition through vivid metaphors. This isn't the first time that popular science has merged with the popular imagination. In the 1960s, for example, pioneering work on "split-brain" patients revealed real functional differences between the two cerebral hemispheres—an idea that quickly became a metaphor for ancient intuitions about reason and passion."
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Mirror neurons have become the "left brain/right brain" of the 21st century.
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a population of cells that fired whenever a monkey prepared to act but also when it watched another animal act.
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"When a monkey watches a researcher bring an object—an ice cream cone, for example— to his mouth, the same brain neurons fire as when the monkey brings a peanut to its own mouth. In the early 1990's, Italian researchers discovered this phenomenon and named the cells "mirror neurons.""
"Thus, premotor mirror neuron areas—areas active during the execution and the observation of an action—previously thought to be involved only in action recognition are actually also involved in understanding the intentions of others. To ascribe an intention is to infer a forthcoming new goal, and this is an operation that the motor system does automatically."
"An idea that would be "dangerous if true" is what Francis Crick referred to as "the astonishing hypothesis"; the notion that our conscious experience and sense of self is based entirely on the activity of a hundred billion bits of jelly — the neurons that constitute the brain. We take this for granted in these enlightened times but even so it never ceases to amaze me.
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"Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, is best known for his work on mirror neurons, a small circuit of cells in the premotor cortex and inferior parietal cortex. What makes these cells so interesting is that they are activated both when we perform a certain action—such as smiling or reaching for a cup—and when we observe someone else performing that same action. In other words, they collapse the distinction between seeing and doing. In recent years, Iacoboni has shown that mirror neurons may be an important element of social cognition and that defects in the mirror neuron system may underlie a variety of mental disorders, such as autism."
"The cells are a special type of "mirror neurons," which are thought to aid understanding of the actions and intentions of others. Mirror neurons fire both when you do something, like grab a bottle of wine, and when you watch another person do the same thing. Instead of carrying out a step-by-step reasoning process to figure out why a friend is grabbing a bottle of wine, we instantly understand what’s going on inside his head because it’s going on in our heads too. "
"Mirror neurons fire both when we perform an action and when we see someone else doing it. The theory is that by simulating action even when watching an act, the neurons allow us to recognise and understand other people's actions and intentions.
However, Alfonso Caramazza at Harvard University and colleagues say their research suggests this theory is flawed."
"MIRROR NEURONS and imitation learning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution"
Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran outlines the fascinating functions of mirror neurons. Only recently discovered, these neurons allow us to learn complex social behaviors, some of which formed the foundations of human civilization as we know it.
"Recent findings are rapidly expanding researchers' understanding of a new class of brain cells -- mirror neurons -- which are active both when people perform an action and when they watch it being performed."
Move over, Marilyn Monroe neurons and Halle Berry neurons... The cellular media darlings of action observation and action execution would like to join you in the human hippocampus and surrounding medial temporal lobe (MTL) areas critical for memory.
# Cells in SMA respond during execution and observation of actions
# Cells in medial temporal lobe respond during observation and execution of actions
# Some respond with excitation during execution and inhibition during observation
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