ATTN: Biology Spags

[Jasper]

Fits into my experience with autistic spectrum people.

[BabylonHoruv]

I thought so. Giacomo Rizzolatti, the guy that made the discovery, is actually a really cool dude, to boot.

I mean, at its core, (beyond learning, empathy and imitation. Also, lol at self proclaimed "empaths" for thinking they're special) I can see it as a self-preservation protocol, mainly because this reaction is not necessarily species specific (a monkey can mirror a man, and a man can mirror, say, a dog) so, as long as you have these mirror neurons, you can tell if another lifeform's intentions are predatory, harmless, or even helpful.

What I'm interested in is, how this can be used in consideration to the spread of ideas (and possibly memetics) and philosophies, in order to counter-act things like harmful monkey-mind reactions. I mean, this could be a hugely important tool for Discordia, or whomever.


Some videos if you're interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzMqPYfeA-s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmEsGQ3JmKg&feature=related

Memetics and mirror neurons are pretty obviously connected.   Memes being simply something which is imitatable, so mirror neurons give the hardware that allows imitation.

It would also suggest that memes are more likely to be present in animals with mirror neurons.

[Reginald Ret]

I thought so. Giacomo Rizzolatti, the guy that made the discovery, is actually a really cool dude, to boot.

I mean, at its core, (beyond learning, empathy and imitation. Also, lol at self proclaimed "empaths" for thinking they're special) I can see it as a self-preservation protocol, mainly because this reaction is not necessarily species specific (a monkey can mirror a man, and a man can mirror, say, a dog) so, as long as you have these mirror neurons, you can tell if another lifeform's intentions are predatory, harmless, or even helpful.

What I'm interested in is, how this can be used in consideration to the spread of ideas (and possibly memetics) and philosophies, in order to counter-act things like harmful monkey-mind reactions. I mean, this could be a hugely important tool for Discordia, or whomever.


Some videos if you're interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzMqPYfeA-s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmEsGQ3JmKg&feature=related

Memetics and mirror neurons are pretty obviously connected.   Memes being simply something which is imitatable, so mirror neurons give the hardware that allows imitation.

It would also suggest that memes are more likely to be present in animals with mirror neurons.

In the same way that the visual cortex is connected to memetics.
Or your spinal cord.
What's your point?
mirror neurons are for increased processing speed when dealing with others(be they human, mammal or insect(why do kids fold their arms under their armpits when pretending to be chickens? because they can tell that their arms are too long. mirror neurons are telling them that the elbow is hardly used by chickens)).

Hi! i'm your frontal lobe, you need me for memes.
          \


Damn, i forgot how complicated neurobiology was.
Every single thing i said was extremely abstracted, but that is the only way i know of communicating these concepts i only partially understand.

[Dimocritus]

as long as you have these mirror neurons, you can tell if another lifeform's intentions are predatory, harmless, or even helpful.

What I'm interested in is, how this can be used in consideration to the spread of ideas (and possibly memetics) and philosophies, in order to counter-act things like harmful monkey-mind reactions. I mean, this could be a hugely important tool for Discordia, or whomever.

What?

I think someone's overstating what it is mirror neurons do.

When you move your foot, neurons fire in your brain.
When you think about moving your foot, neurons fire in your brain, in much the same pattern but less so.  (I think it's lower frequency, could be wrong.)
Thanks to mirror neurons, the same thing happens just from watching someone else move his foot - you don't need to consciously think about doing it yourself.

So the existence of mirror neurons just cuts the chain from:
see someone moving -> think about moving -> brain activation almost as if you were moving
to:
see someone moving -> brain activation almost as if you were moving.

Mirror neurons do not tell you what another animal's intentions are.  At best, you might see a face, and think to yourself "If I were making that face, how would I be feeling?", and there the mirror neurons would help you imagine yourself making that face... but mirror neurons are in no way, shape, or form are the super-secret mind-reading neurons that science has discovered, validating some old new-age nonsense in a different form.

Ok, that makes sense.

But, wouldn't there be a way, at least on some level, to influence (not mahdgickally) people by taking advantage of this subconscious reaction? Or maybe it's happening all the tiime on a smaller scale? I dunno, seems like there is some un-tapped potential for something in all this...

[Iason Ouabache]

Mirror neurons were covered pretty good in "Making Up the Mind" by Chris Firth. I'll try to remember to pull some quotes later on tonight.  Of if you have the PDF, just read chapter 6: How Brains Model Minds.

[Iason Ouabache]

It is not just eye movements that we follow so slavishly. Our brains have an automatic tendency to imitate any movement that we see. The most striking evidence for imitation in the brain comes from a study in which electrical activity was measured in single neurons in monkeys. Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues in Parma were studying neurons involved in making grasping movements. They found that different neurons were concerned with different kinds of grasping movements. One neuron became more active when the monkey used a precision grip with finger and thumb to pick up a small object like a peanut. Another neuron became more active when the monkey used a power grip with the whole hand to pick up an object like a pencil. In the part of the brain concerned with motor control (the premotor cortex), there were neurons representing a whole vocabulary of different grasping movements.

But, to the researchers' surprise, some of these neurons didn't become active only when the monkey grasped something. They also became active when the monkey saw one of the experimenters grasping something. The neuron that responded when the monkey picked up a peanut also responded when the monkey saw the experimenter picking up a peanut. These are now called mirror neurons. The vocabulary of actions represented by these neurons applies to the observation of actions as well as to the production of actions.

Imitation is like perception. We do it automatically without having to think about it. To us it seems easy. It is only when we try to make a machine do it that we realize how difficult imitation is. When I see you move your arm, I simply make the same movements. Your arm movement produces a changing pattern of light on my retina that is interpreted by my brain. But how does my brain manage to translate a series of changing visual patterns into a series of muscle commands that will produce the same movement in my arm? For one thing, I can't see which muscles are involved. Furthermore, if I am imitating a child, I will have to send different commands to my muscles to get the same movement, because my arm is much longer.

To imitate someone, we watch their movements closely, but we don't copy these movements. We use the movements to discover something in the mind of the person we are watching: the goal of their movement. Then we imitate them by making a movement that achieves the same goal.

But imitation also gives us access to the private mental worlds of others. We don't just imitate gross movements of the arms and legs. We also automatically imitate the subtle movements of faces. And this imitation of faces makes us feel different. If I see a smiling face, I smile a little too, and I feel happier. If I see a face filled with disgust, I will feel disgusted too. So even these private feelings are automatically shared through the ability of our brain to translate between perceptions and actions.

[Iason Ouabache]

But the subjective experience of pain is not directly coupled to the physical nature of the stimulus that causes it. A hot rod feels less painful if you are distracted, even though the temperature of the rod has not changed. The subjective experience of pain can also be altered by hypnosis or by taking a harmless pill that you have been told is a pain killer. Activity in some parts of the brain matches with the physical temperature of the rod. Activity in other parts matches with the subjective feeling of the pain. We might contrast these as the physical aspect of pain and the mental experience of pain.

So what happens when we see someone else in pain? The same brain areas become active as when we experience pain ourselves. Is this the basis of empathy, our ability to share the inner feelings of others? Certainly people who are more empathic show greater brain activation when they see another in pain.

How is this possible? How can I experience what you are feeling? We can answer this question by looking at precisely which areas that light up in the brain during empathy. As we have seen, activity in some brain areas relate to the physical aspects of the pain: how hot the rod is, or where it is touching you. These areas don't light up when you know that someone else is in pain. Activity in other areas relates to your mental experience of the pain. These areas do light up in response to someone else's pain. So what we can share is the mental experience of the pain, not its physical aspect. These brain areas also become active when you anticipate pain, if you know that 5 seconds after hearing a tone you will be touched by the hot rod. If you can anticipate the pain that you will feel, is it so difficult to anticipate the pain that someone else will feel? Of course we can't experience the physical sensations that impinge on others. But we can construct the mental models based on these stimuli. It is because we make mental models of the physical world that we can share our experiences in the mental world.

[Reginald Ret]

Very cool Iason.
thanks.