Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA17545 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 30 Jan 2001 19:14:18 GMT Message-Id: <5.0.2.1.0.20010130125405.00b02210@pop3.htcomp.net> X-Sender: mmills@pop3.htcomp.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0.2 Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 13:08:02 -0600 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Mark Mills <mmills@htcomp.net> Subject: Re: Mirror neurons In-Reply-To: <B69C6E8F.6F23%bbenzon@mindspring.com> References: <3A76F332.FF82C86B@pacbell.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 01:13 PM 1/30/01 -0500, you wrote:
> > It would not at all suprise me to find that cats or rats show similar
> > patterns of neuron firing.
>
>I would, and I suspect the folks who've done the work on mirror neurons
>would be surprised as well.
Here is an additional quote from the article:
"Galllese and his colleagues didn't set out to find anything so radical
when, in the early 90s, they started recording the activity of neurons in a
macaque's brain. They were tapping into the signals emitted from nerve
cells in a part of the monkey's brain known as F5. This is a part of a
larger region called the premotor cortex, whose activity is linked to
planning and making movements. Some years earlier, the same researchers
had discovered that neurons in F5 fired when an animal performed certain
goal -oriented motor tasks using its hands or mouth, such as picking things
up, holding or biting them.
They wanted to learn more about F5 neurons--how they responded to different
objects with different shapes and sizes, for example. So they presented
monkeys with things like raisins, slices of apple, paper clips, cubes and
spheres. It wasn't long before they noticed something odd. As the monkey
watched the experimenter's hand pick up the object and bring it close, a
group of the F5 neurons leaped into action. But when the monkey looked at
the same object lying on a tray, nothing happened. When it picked up the
object, the same neurons fired again. Clearly, their job wasn't just to
recognize a particular object.
......
Several [human] brain imaging studies followed, the first led by
Rizzolatti, and another by Scott Grafton, then at the University of
Southern California... Both found that watching an experimenter pick up
and handle objects activates two regions of the brain behind the temples on
the left side: the superior temporal sulcus and, just above it, a part
called Broca's area.
An even more recent study by Marco Iacoboni at the Los Angeles School of
Medicine confirmed that Broca's area was active while volunteers either
watched images of someone drumming their fingers, and when they also tried
to imitate the movement they saw (Science, vol 286, p2526)
The finding that Broca's area was activated was doubly intriguing. For one
thing, F5 in monkeys is considered an analogue for Broca's area in
humans. But even more suggestive was the fact that, while F5 is associated
mainly with hand movement, Broca's area is traditionally thought of as a
speech production area. This raised questions about what a mirroring
system might have to do with language..."
So, it looks like these experiments have been entirely with primates.
Mark
http://www.htcomp.net/markmills
===============================================================
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 : Tue Jan 30 2001 - 19:16:12 GMT