Mirror Neurones

• How do mirror neurons lead to ASD?

  Ramachandran and Oberman - "Broken Mirror"

  damaged mirror system prevents developing children from imitating, understanding behavior of others
• What is ASD?

  Autism Spectrum Disorder - individuals experience difficulty with social and cognitive skills for example difficulty with:

  • understanding intention
  • emotions
  • theory of mind
• Ramachandran - mirror neurones and evolution


  • Helps us understand intention, emotion, and perspective
  • Allows us to live in groups with complex social roles
  • Important in the development of humans as a social species
• Gallese and Goldman - intention


  • Mirror neurons respond to the intention behind the action
  • we simulate others actions in our motor system and experience their intentions
• Simon et al - pain


  neurons firing in response to pain also fire when we see others in pain
• Haker et al - Yawning


  Used FMRI scans to show that areas rich in mirror neurons are involved in contagious acts like yawning

  Brodmann's area- right frontal lobe
• Mirror neurons


  • Special neurons involved in social cognition allow us to interpret intention and emotion in others
  • They fire in response to personal actions or see another's action
• Mouras et al - ponography


  • fMRI scans found heightened activity pars opercularis (controls sexual arousal)
  • Showed perspective-taking when viewing heterosexual pornography
• Difficulty studying mirror neurones

  Cannot measure activity of all individual brain cells - unethical to insert electrodes

  Brain scan findings based on inference
• Hickock - existence of mirror neurones?

  We only know mirror neurons by what they do but cannot identify individual cells

  And their function may be to use other's behavior to plan our own instead of understanding the cognitions behind it.
• Mirror neuron system

  Neurons that allow simulation of the physical acts of others to better understand their intention, and the emotional experience of others to understand their internal state
• Rizozolatti et al - macaque monkeys


  • Studied electrical activity in a monkey's motor cortex
  • the same area was stimulated when a researcher reached for his lunch
  • these were the same brain cells used when they reached themselves