By looking at a music or theater, sometimes we feel the need to do it, or even sensations derived from watching. This, according to experts, occurs because as we watched the show, have enabled us special neurons known comoneuronas mirror.
Mirror neurons are a group of cells that were discovered by the team Neurobiologist Giacomo Rizzolattiy that appear to be related to empathic, social and imitative behavior. Its mission is to reflect the activity we are seeing.
After conducting various studies it found that there is a group of cells that are activated in the brain when an animal or human being performs an activity, and when you look to others to perform an action or has a mental representation of it. Hence comes the reason for using the word "mirror"
The activities of mirror neurons and their importance to the understanding of human behavior: Applied neuroscience (I)
It seems that our friends children, called "monkeys" who imitate others were right. Thus, at least it established modern neuroscience.
Imitation or incorporating behaviors of others as if they were their own, inadvertently, are not new to the understanding of human behavior.
In psychoanalysis there are two similar phenomena, but not identical, which can be confused with what we propose to cover in this, the first three lessons.
These are:
Identification and
Empathy
Here we examine what are the mirror neurons and their imitative aspects and adaptation functions, to follow with an analysis of the concept of the theory of mind and finally with the study of synchrony in humans --- three themes interrelated .
mirror neuron
A mirror neuron, or "mirror neuron" is a nerve cell that activates and download --- in one of two situations: 1. When an animal performs an action and 2. When an animal observes while the other makes - - especially if both are members of the same species.
In the second example, the neuron reproduces reflects its function in the brain, the same activity corresponding to the sensed neural activity --- like a mirror --- but no discernible external behavior.
In other words, it is as if the observer, whoever carried out the action --- but not act it.
What is mobilized is a neural reflex response in the brain, invisible to the naked eye and can only be measured with magnetic resonance instruments.
These neurons were detected in some primates, birds, and our species.
In humans they have been located mainly in the Broca's area in the inferior parietal cortex of the brain.
For applications to clinic, some scientists consider this discovery one of the most important findings of neuroscience in the last decade.
One of the leaders in this field, VS, consider mirror neurons, as essential for development, by imitation, language in children --- and, theoretically, in other species, possessing rudiments of expression --- though there are doubts about the certainty of this assertion by the distinguished scientist.
In the monkey, mirror neurons are found in the inferior frontal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobe. These neurons are activated when the monkeys perform certain actions, but they also light up on the scanner when the monkeys watch other monkeys to perform the same function.
Researchers using MRI tests have established the same phenomenon of concordance between praxis and visualization, in the human brain.
