Future generations may be a lifeform with highly developed mirror neurons, and thereby communicate by mental telepathy. Carl:
www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/science/10mirr.html?pagewanted=printJanuary 10, 2006
Cells That Read Minds
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
On a hot summer day 15 years ago in Parma, Italy, a monkey sat in a special
laboratory chair waiting for researchers to return from lunch. Thin wires had
been implanted in the region of its brain involved in planning and carrying out
movements.
Every time the monkey grasped and moved an object, some cells in that brain
region would fire, and a monitor would register a sound: brrrrrip, brrrrrip,
brrrrrip.
A graduate student entered the lab with an ice cream cone in his hand. The
monkey stared at him. Then, something amazing happened: when the student raised
the cone to his lips, the monitor sounded - brrrrrip, brrrrrip, brrrrrip - even
though the monkey had not moved but had simply observed the student grasping the
cone and moving it to his mouth.
The researchers, led by Giacomo Rizzolatti, a neuroscientist at the University
of Parma, had earlier noticed the same strange phenomenon with peanuts. The same
brain cells fired when the monkey watched humans or other monkeys bring peanuts
to their mouths as when the monkey itself brought a peanut to its mouth.
Later, the scientists found cells that fired when the monkey broke open a peanut
or heard someone break a peanut. The same thing happened with bananas, raisins
and all kinds of other objects.
"It took us several years to believe what we were seeing," Dr. Rizzolatti said
in a recent interview. The monkey brain contains a special class of cells,
called mirror neurons, that fire when the animal sees or hears an action and
when the animal carries out the same action on its own.
But if the findings, published in 1996, surprised most scientists, recent
research has left them flabbergasted. Humans, it turns out, have mirror neurons
that are far smarter, more flexible and more highly evolved than any of those
found in monkeys, a fact that scientists say reflects the evolution of humans'
sophisticated social abilities.
The human brain has multiple mirror neuron systems that specialize in carrying
out and understanding not just the actions of others but their intentions, the
social meaning of their behavior and their emotions.
"We are exquisitely social creatures," Dr. Rizzolatti said. "Our survival
depends on understanding the actions, intentions and emotions of others."
He continued, "Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others not through
conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation. By feeling, not by
thinking."
The discovery is shaking up numerous scientific disciplines, shifting the
understanding of culture, empathy, philosophy, language, imitation, autism and
psychotherapy.
Everyday experiences are also being viewed in a new light. Mirror neurons reveal
how children learn, why people respond to certain types of sports, dance, music
and art, why watching media violence may be harmful and why many men like
pornography.
How can a single mirror neuron or system of mirror neurons be so incredibly
smart?
Most nerve cells in the brain are comparatively pedestrian. Many specialize in
detecting ordinary features of the outside world. Some fire when they encounter
a horizontal line while others are dedicated to vertical lines. Others detect a
single frequency of sound or a direction of movement.
Moving to higher levels of the brain, scientists find groups of neurons that
detect far more complex features like faces, hands or expressive body language.
Still other neurons help the body plan movements and assume complex postures.
Mirror neurons make these complex cells look like numbskulls. Found in several
areas of the brain - including the premotor cortex, the posterior parietal lobe,
the superior temporal sulcus and the insula - they fire in response to chains of
actions linked to intentions.
Studies show that some mirror neurons fire when a person reaches for a glass or
watches someone else reach for a glass; others fire when the person puts the
glass down and still others fire when the person reaches for a toothbrush and so
on. They respond when someone kicks a ball, sees a ball being kicked, hears a
ball being kicked and says or hears the word "kick."
0"When you see me perform an action - such as picking up a baseball - you
automatically simulate the action in your own brain," said Dr. Marco Iacoboni, a
neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies mirror
neurons. "Circuits in your brain, which we do not yet entirely understand,
inhibit you from moving while you simulate," he said. "But you understand my
action because you have in your brain a template for that action based on your
own movements.
"When you see me pull my arm back, as if to throw the ball, you also have in
your brain a copy of what I am doing and it helps you understand my goal.
Because of mirror neurons, you can read my intentions. You know what I am going
to do next."
He continued: "And if you see me choke up, in emotional distress from striking
out at home plate, mirror neurons in your brain simulate my distress. You
automatically have empathy for me. You know how I feel because you literally
feel what I am feeling."
Mirror neurons seem to analyzed scenes and to read minds. If you see someone
reach toward a bookshelf and his hand is out of sight, you have little doubt
that he is going to pick up a book because your mirror neurons tell you so.
In a study published in March 2005 in Public Library of Science, Dr. Iacoboni
and his colleagues reported that mirror neurons could discern if another person
who was picking up a cup of tea planned to drink from it or clear it from the
table. "Mirror neurons provide a powerful biological foundation for the
evolution of culture," said Patricia Greenfield, a psychologist at the U.C.L.A.
who studies human development.
Until now, scholars have treated culture as fundamentally separate from biology,
she said. "But now we see that mirror neurons absorb culture directly, with each
generation teaching the next by social sharing, imitation and observation."
Other animals - monkeys, probably apes and possibly elephants, dolphins and dogs
- have rudimentary mirror neurons, several mirror neuron experts said. But
humans, with their huge working memory, carry out far more sophisticated
imitations.
Language is based on mirror neurons, according to Michael Arbib, a
neuroscientist at the University of Southern California. One such system, found
in the front of the brain, contains overlapping circuitry for spoken language
and sign language.
In an article published in Trends in Neuroscience in March 1998, Dr. Arbib
described how complex hand gestures and the complex tongue and lip movements
used in making sentences use the same machinery. Autism, some researchers
believe, may involve broken mirror neurons. A study published in the Jan. 6
issue of Nature Neuroscience by Mirella Dapretto, a neuroscientist at U.C.L.A.,
found that while many people with autism can identify an emotional expression,
like sadness, on another person's face, or imitate sad looks with their own
faces, they do not feel the emotional significance of the imitated emotion. From
observing other people, they do not know what it feels like to be sad, angry,
disgusted or surprised.
Mirror neurons provide clues to how children learn: they kick in at birth. Dr.
Andrew Meltzoff at the University of Washington has published studies showing
that infants a few minutes old will stick out their tongues at adults doing the
same thing. More than other primates, human children are hard-wired for
imitation, he said, their mirror neurons involved in observing what others do
and practicing doing the same things.
Still, there is one caveat, Dr. Iacoboni said. Mirror neurons work best in real
life, when people are face to face. Virtual reality and videos are shadowy
substitutes.
Nevertheless, a study in the January 2006 issue of Media Psychology found that
when children watched violent television programs, mirror neurons, as well as
several brain regions involved in aggression were activated, increasing the
probability that the children would behave violently.
The ability to share the emotions of others appears to be intimately linked to
the functioning of mirror neurons, said Dr. Christian Keysers, who studies the
neural basis of empathy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and
who has published several recent articles on the topic in Neuron.
When you see someone touched in a painful way, your own pain areas are
activated, he said. When you see a spider crawl up someone's leg, you feel a
creepy sensation because your mirror neurons are firing.
People who rank high on a scale measuring empathy have particularly active
mirror neurons systems, Dr. Keysers said.
Social emotions like guilt, shame, pride, embarrassment, disgust and lust are
based on a uniquely human mirror neuron system found in a part of the brain
called the insula, Dr. Keysers said. In a study not yet published, he found that
when people watched a hand go forward to caress someone and then saw another
hand push it away rudely, the insula registered the social pain of rejection.
Humiliation appears to be mapped in the brain by the same mechanisms that encode
real physical pain, he said.
Psychotherapists are understandably enthralled by the discovery of mirror
neurons, said Dr. Daniel Siegel, the director of the Center for Human
Development in Los Angeles and the author of "Parenting From the Inside Out,"
because they provide a possible neurobiological basis for the psychological
mechanisms known as transference and countertransference.
In transference, clients "transfer" feelings about important figures in their
lives onto a therapist. Similarly, in countertransference, a therapist's
reactions to a client are shaped by the therapist's own earlier relationships.
Therapists can use their own mirror system to understand a client's problems and
to generate empathy, he said. And they can help clients understand that many of
their experiences stem from what other people have said or done to them in the
past.
Art exploits mirror neurons, said Dr. Vittorio Gallese, a neuroscientist at
Parma University. When you see the Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini's hand
of divinity grasping marble, you see the hand as if it were grasping flesh, he
said. Experiments show that when you read a novel, you memorize positions of
objects from the narrator's point of view.
Professional athletes and coaches, who often use mental practice and imagery,
have long exploited the brain's mirror properties perhaps without knowing their
biological basis, Dr. Iacoboni said. Observation directly improves muscle
performance via mirror neurons.
Similarly, millions of fans who watch their favorite sports on television are
hooked by mirror neuron activation. In someone who has never played a sport -
say tennis - the mirror neurons involved in running, swaying and swinging the
arms will be activated, Dr. Iacoboni said.
But in someone who plays tennis, the mirror systems will be highly activated
when an overhead smash is observed. Watching a game, that person will be better
able to predict what will happen next, he said.
In yet another realm, mirror neurons are powerfully activated by pornography,
several scientists said. For example, when a man watches another man have sexual
intercourse with a woman, the observer's mirror neurons spring into action. The
vicarious thrill of watching sex, it turns out, is not so vicarious after all.
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