Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

"Mirror cells" May Be Key To Communication

Posted by Hemos on from the pretty-cool-story dept.

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."

3 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by atrowe · · Score: 5
    "...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.

    --

    -atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.

  2. Interesting by fantom_winter · · Score: 5
    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.

  3. Required for meme replication? by Cato · · Score: 5

    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/