I can tell what you're thinking

Betterhumans picked up on this NewScientist.com article on a study published in Current Biology (vol 16, p 1824)that examined auditory "mirror neurons" in humans using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).

Mirror neurons are the groups of nerves that are stimulated in our brains when we imagine someone else doing some action - in this case, the neurons fire when we hear a distinctive sound, like someone biting an apple or tearing a piece of paper.

The "cool" factor is not just that our motor neurons fire when we imagine doing some action. My neurons fire when I see or think about you doing something. Or when I hear a sound that I know is associated with someone else doing something.

Not only that, but the strength of the stimulation is stronger in people who test stronger on psychological tests for empathy, or the ability to identify with another person. Whether it's pain, joy or actions.

It's "cool" to find physical proof, through high tech, of a psychological phenomenon. And I love my measurements.

The "uncool"? All this technology gets smaller, more mobile, and more fine tuned. There's a worry that future scanning based on fMRI and what we learn from it will lead to machines that can read minds, or something very close to it.

Not me. I've got my tin hat.

Seriously, the current theory is that we learn by watching and mimicking others - even if it's just in our heads. Speech is associated with the same area of the brain. Earlier studies have shown that autistic people have less mirror neuron activity than people without autism. Other studies have shown that dancers have more activity when watching steps that they have been trained to perform - things they've learned - than when they see new movements.


So, is it that sociopaths and autistic children (not equivalent, except in the inability to feel others' pain) did not learn empathy, or is it that they do not physically have the functioning mirror neurons?

Hey, maybe we could screen doctors and bioethicists - maybe politicians - for mirror neuron activity.