Mirror Neurons Essay

Your personal comparison to watching football and relating to the action of the game is a great example of mirroring neurons in action! It is interesting how we as individuals become humanly self aware of the reasons behind our behaviors and actions. In fact, “all of our thoughts, feelings, and behavior can ultimately be traced to the activity of neurons” (Wood, Wood, and Boyd, 2014. p.41). Mirror neurons are essential to establishing a human bond through the use of empathy, which may help a person relate to the world.

Empathy has been used in science. Barbara McClintock, a Nobel geneticist had success in working with corn plants and genes. She stated that her success was because she had “a feeling” for the organism. She thoughts and felt what it was like to be the organism. Another study was made in 1960, Jane Goodall was sent to study chimpanzees. Goodall was not a scientist but it was thought that she would have a different outlook, one uncluttered from theory. This lead to a long study of chimpanzees where she used empathy to feel what they were feeling. She was able to get a better understanding of their behavior. Empathy is proven to flow and integrate between neurons of the brain circuit. This brings the idea of “feeling” into science. Empathy is a scientific matter although tapping into the deeper levels of empathy is thought to be a mystical practice close to mindreading.

Empathy and caring is an essential part of human health. We love because we can empathize (Szalavitz & Perry, 2010). Empathy underlies everything that makes society work; such as altruism, collaboration, love and charity. Failures to empathize are a key part of social problems, such as crime, violence, war, racism, child abuse and inequity. Although we are genetically predisposed to care for others, the development of empathy requires a lifelong process of relational interaction (Szalavitz & Perry, 2010). More importantly, the first relationship humans experience, the

Upon reviewing the video entitled “Mirror Neurons” by Nova Science now, I gained a better understanding of the the whole mirror neuron system (MNS) and it's functions. In fact, a neuron is defined as “a specialized cell that conducts impulses through the nervous system” (Wood, Wood, and Boyd, 2014. p.41). The difference between a neuron and a mirror neuron is simple, a mirror neuron is defined as “a network of cells that the brain uses to interpret and produce motor actions and emotion-related behavior” (p.99). In my opinion mirror neurons are essential to establishing a human bond, considering they help the human brain translate or connect to one's own actions/behaviors to the actions and behaviors of another person. Mirror neurons help an individual experience empathy, which may assist in an individual's ability to relate to the world.

Empathy is the ability to understand and experience the feelings of others, particularly others’ suffering. Humanity’s gift of understanding complex emotions ushers in a new way of understanding ourselves and how we react to stimuli. This ultimately leads to questioning of everything, leading us to one strong notion: Does empathy guide or hinder moral action?

It has been observed that mirror neurons are active when a person feels an emotion or witnesses another person expressing emotion, which could explain the feeling of empathy.

In his book, Albrecht introduces the empathy model developed by Dr. George Thompson, to further explain and build on the concept of Empathy, as a part of our social intelligence. Dr. Thompson, who Albrecht described as a Renaissance man, wrote several books, created a series of seminars, and started an institute based on concepts of communication that he calls, “Verbal Judo.”

The article, “A Social-Neuroscience Perspective on Empathy,” in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, explores both behavioral and cognitive studies and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies to understand how the emotional and affective states of others elicit an empathetic response in an individual, how the brain processes these emotions, and how it is essential for the brain to differentiate empathy from self-emotions. Additionally, the authors explain how an empathetic response to another’s emotions or affect is critical in social interactions. The authors define empathy as “the capacity to understand and respond to the unique affective experiences of another person.” They also state that there are three universal components of empathy, “(1) an affective response to another person, which often entails sharing the person’s emotional state; (2) a cognitive capacity to take the perspective of another person; and (3) emotional regulation.” These primary components of empathy drive the basic mechanisms for social interaction, which are the automatic tendency to mimic the

Being able to feel empathy, a feeling to understand and share feelings of another, has always

Mirror neurons have been found to play a role in love and intimacy, in addition to feelings of empathy and altruism. These neurons not only help us to understand others, but they may even synchronize our behaviors and emotions with other people, thus influencing social connections and interactions between individuals. Mirror neurons are activated when we perform actions similar to other people, and when we observe or hear others performing acts similarly to us. Mirror neurons do not only respond directly to muscle movements, but also to the context of the situation. For example, if while watching a movie the actress reaches her hand for an object, our “grasping” mirror neurons will fire, even if the full action is out of view and cut off by

The recent discovery of mirror neurons was accidently noticed by Italian neuroscientists who were working with monkeys to study certain areas of the brain that operated cognitive movements. Upon this discovery, it was determined that there is an abundance of previously unknown cells within the brain that work to consciously or unconsciously detect emotions of others through their actions and behaviours, which we in turn mirror by mimicking those exact emotions. It is believed that this

This ability is controlled by mirror neurons. These neurons are created to activate and send signals based on another living creature’s actions. For example, if we were to witness someone experiencing an emotion, these neurons would mirror the specific emotion and ultimately feel the same way. For the most part, empathy paves the path to sympathy. This is the ability to perceive someone else’s pain and the desire to relieve them of it. Both abilities allow us to form even tighter bonds to certain fictional characters. For example, our hearts ache during one scene where a young Forrest Gump tries to make his way down the bus aisle as he looks for a seat. We see from his point of view as his cruel classmates refuse to share their seats with him. The camera shifts to Forrest’s face where we begin to feel how hurt he

The neuronal substrate of imitative behaviors and empathy has been hypothesized to be the Mirror Neuron System (MNS) (Hadjikhani et al. 2007; Cattaneo & Rizzolatti 2009; Rizzolatti & Craighero 2004).This MNS is present in monkeys and humans. While this system has been primarily involved in motor representation and shared emotions among individuals, it might also be traced back to mirror neuron mechanisms (Gallese et al. 2004; Dapretto et al. 2005). Accordingly, activation of the MNS in a task relying on empathic abilities without explicit task-related motor components supports the view that the MNS is not only involved in motor action but also in emotional cognition (Sears et al. 1999; Fecteau et al. 2006; Dapretto et al. 2005). Therefore, hMNS is probably the common substrate for action observation and execution (Lehéricy et al. 2006). Further, the sensory-motor cortex contains neurons that are active during perception and execution (Avenanti et al. 2013), which are a part of an extended MNS (Schulte-Rüther et al. 2007). This is consistent with finding showing that MNS is

For a number of years empathy was difficult to measure, as there was limited basis of empirical data. This changed with the progression of technology, as the biological approach could then using brain imaging techniques to visually represent the activity going on in the brain and biological psychologists could then research links between the activity and behavioural traits like empathy. One way in which biological psychology has helped us understand empathy as a complex trait is through exploration of mirror neurons.

I believe empathy is formed at home. When we are kids, our parents teach us the golden rule, which is: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As we grow older, we are taught that it´s important to care about people’s feelings. We grow up with the idea that we shouldn't only care about ourselves, but always be concerned for others. In my opinion, everyone should desire