Mirror neuron
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A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another.
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Discovery
In the 1980s and 1990s, neurophysiologists Giacomo Rizzolatti, Giuseppe Di Pellegrino, Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi, and Vittorio Gallese at the University of Parma placed electrodes in the ventral premotor cortex of the macaque monkey to study neurons specialized for the control of hand and mouth actions; for example, taking hold of an object and manipulating it. During each experiment, the researchers allowed the monkey to reach for pieces of food, and recorded from single neurons in the monkey's brain, thus measuring the neuron's response to certain movements.
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See also
- Associative Sequence Learning
- Common coding theory
- Emotional contagion
- Empathy
- Mirror-touch synesthesia
- Motor cognition
- Motor theory of speech perception
- On Intelligence
- Positron emission tomography
- Simulation theory of empathy
- Speech repetition
- Spindle neuron
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Mirror neuron" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
