Mirror Neurons.

[Guest guest]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2005/12/12/we_feel_your\

_pain_and_your_happiness_too/

 

Do you ever feel a twitch in your arm as you watch a baseball player

wallop the ball? When others cry, do your eyes tear up as well? Do you

tense as a TV surgeon slices into an incision?

 

Those are your ''mirror neurons " at work.

 

Just over a decade ago, Italian neuroscientists studying monkeys were

amazed to discover that the brain has a system of neurons, or nerve

cells, that specialize in a sort of ''walking in another's shoes "

function.

 

Some of the same neurons, they found, become active when a monkey

actually makes a movement and when it is only watching another monkey,

or even a human, make that same movement. It is as if the monkey is

imitating -- or mirroring -- the other's movement in its mind.

 

....

 

 

http://www.nyas.org/ebriefreps/main.asp?intSubSectionID=3529

 

* Neuroscience can reveal much about the emotions that art

inspires and about the universality of emotions.

* When we view pictures depicting motion, we often feel a sense of

physical empathy, as if we would like to move ourselves. The firing of

" mirror neurons " may cause these " imitative feels. "

* Mirror neurons may explain not only imitative feels but also the

empathy that we experience when we view pictures of sad faces.

 

 

....

 

http://www.fradical.com/Research_on_mirror_neurons.htm

 

urther investigation of mirror neurons promises " to do for

neuroscience what DNA did for biology, " a brain researcher at the

University of California-San Diego enthusiastically predicts. He

expects they eventually will unlock explanations for " a host of

mental abilities that have remained mysterious. "

 

Already, says Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force

Science Research Center at Minnesota State University-Mankato, what's

being discovered about mirror neurons suggests " profound implications

about how police officers need to be trained.

 

" The more an instructor can stimulate mirror neurons, the greater the

chance that officers can readily pick up new skills. Also they will

clue in more quickly to recognizing when those skills need to be used

for their own protection. "

 

....

 

 

http://www.youramazingbrain.org.uk/Brainbody/dancers.htm

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01-monkey.html

 

http://www.ivarhagendoorn.com/research/perception.html