Human Mirror Neurons
“Is this the first ever direct evidence for human mirror neurons?”(BPS Research Digest blog), Mirror neurons are one of the most hyped concepts in psychology and neurocience. V.S. Ramachandran famously wrote that they will ‘do for psychology what DNA did for biology’. Although recordings from single cells in the brains of monkeys have identified ‘mirror’ neurons that respond both to the execution of a movement and the observation of another agent performing that same movement, the existence of such cells in humans has, up until now, been inferred only from indirect evidence, particularly brain imaging. Now Roy Mukamel and colleagues have provided what appears to be the first ever direct evidence, using implanted electrode recordings of single cells, for the existence of mirror neurons in humans.これまで脳画像から存在が仮定されていただけの人間のミラー・ニューロンの存在1がやっと直接的に確認できたという話… ...