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I see what ya did there...and I feel ya...
By Crobar in Neurognosis
April 13, 2010

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Back in the late 80's and early 90's a group of Italian scientists were measuring neuronal responses in Macaques (an old world monkey). They found, curiously, that a particular area of neurons would fire when the monkey would simply watch objects being handled as opposed to handling the object themselves. The Italians' discovery was met with the expected skepticism. The researchers, however, had discovered something very important - mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are neurons which, as with the monkeys, fire when we observe (as some evidence has shown even when hearing) someone performing a particular act. For example when I pick up my cup of coffee a particular set of neurons fire. Some of those neurons fire just as they would when I picked up my cup but when I observed someone else pick up a cup of coffee.

The discovery has had massive implications for the origins of empathy - a likely basis for our biologically-based social grouping rules which we'd colloquially refer to a "morality" but evolutionary psychobiology of morality would be another blog entirely.

The discovery also has implication for learning and modeling, language and insights into autism spectrum disorders.

However, mirror neurons haven't been without their critics and research claiming to cast doubt onto even their very existence especially in humans. A recent study in the journal Current Biology has become a game changer for mirror neurons with the first direct observation of mirror neurons in action in human brains. The research confirms the the existence of mirror neurons in humans just as they were found in Macaques.

People have always marveled at the human abilities to learn from simply watching, to imitate, understand intention and even "feel" for another person. The answer to why we possess these characteristics went unanswered for centuries with many tossing their ideas in the ring - God/Supreme Being/Deity, spiritual essences, learned/conditioned behavior and so forth. However, it's these fun little cells in our brains that are responsible.