Re: mirror neurons & memes?

From: Robin Faichney (robin@reborntechnology.co.uk)
Date: Fri Jan 26 2001 - 14:23:45 GMT

  • Next message: Chris Taylor: "Re: MIT research reports rats dream of mazes" 

    Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA05147 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 26 Jan 2001 14:41:11 GMT
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 14:23:45 +0000
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: mirror neurons & memes?
Message-ID: <20010126142345.A554@reborntechnology.co.uk>
References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745C09@inchna.stir.ac.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.12i
In-Reply-To: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745C09@inchna.stir.ac.uk>; from v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk on Fri, Jan 26, 2001 at 11:00:03AM -0000
From: Robin Faichney <robin@reborntechnology.co.uk>
Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk

    On Fri, Jan 26, 2001 at 11:00:03AM -0000, Vincent Campbell wrote:
    > Hiya everyone,
    >
    > I saw an article yesterday (in 'New Scientist', 27/1/01, 'Read My Mind', by
    > Alison Motluk, pp: 23-26) about 'mirror neurons'.
    >
    > Have these been discussed before on the list?
    >
    > Basically these are neurons in the brain that fire when we watch other
    > people doing things, and monkeys have them in a region of the brain
    > approximating Broca's area in human brains. Researchers reckon these
    > neurons could be the key to humans' theory of mind. The article cites a
    > couple of recent academic articles, and this talk from VS Ramachandran from
    > a little while ago:-
    >
    > > http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge69.html
    > >
    > >From the tone of these pieces, maybe internalist memetics has its smoking
    > gun after all...

    I don't think so! OK, so I haven't read it yet, but from what you say
    here they're talking about empathy/imitation, which we already know
    has to be innate for _any_ form of memetics to work. There's a world
    of difference between identifying a neural mechanism for imitation,
    and identifying the neural representation of a particular imitated item. 

    -- 
Robin Faichney
robin@reborntechnology.co.uk

    ===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jan 26 2001 - 14:43:10 GMT