| '"Mirror cells" May Be Key To Communication' | Login/Create an Account | 191 comments |
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is this ,,, (Score:3, Funny)
by bluelip on Friday February 02, @03:54PM EST
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Definately explains why I flinch when someone gets kicked in the crotch.
Yep, I never spell check. |
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- Re:is this ,,, by bluelip (Score:1) Friday February 02, @03:57PM EST
- Re:is this ,,, by atrowe (Score:2) Friday February 02, @04:03PM EST
- Re:is this ,,, by sharkey (Score:1) Friday February 02, @04:38PM EST
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So this begs the question... (Score:1, Funny)
by Ronin X on Friday February 02, @03:57PM EST
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Who will be the first to patent Mirror Cells?
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Me Too (Score:1)
by SEWilco on Friday February 02, @03:59PM EST
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http://www.wilcoxon.org/~sewilco
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Gee, I could have done that research!
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Well... (Score:4, Informative)
by atrowe
(adamtrowe@hotmail.com)
on Friday February 02, @03:59PM EST
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(User #209484 Info)
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| "...neurons that fire both when you perform an action and when you observe someone else performing that action." I guess that explains the appeal in porn.
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- Re:Well... by Black Parrot (Score:1) Friday February 02, @04:18PM EST
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Possible application (Score:2, Insightful)
by Psycho Boy Jack on Friday February 02, @04:00PM EST
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(User #268087 Info)
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| I wonder if it would be possible to emulate this with software; it could be a big leap in AIs being able to recognize patterns.
Applications are endless...user friendly anticipation of commands, targeted ads, digital sentience...
You know that saying, how you always kill the one you love? Well, it works both ways. |
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Well, hot damn. (Score:2, Offtopic)
by AxB_teeth
(markd@NOconpoint.SPAM.com)
on Friday February 02, @04:02PM EST
(#20)
(User #156656 Info)
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Sounds like we figured out empathy. Now tell me how the hell we're supposed to detect replicants.
I think I can fly, Probably just falling - Spiritualized |
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Reminds me of a tennis training video... (Score:2)
by fluffhead
(esherril@not-so-hotmail.com)
on Friday February 02, @04:06PM EST
(#29)
(User #32589 Info)
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I saw back in the mid-eighties in high school. The video instructor (Stan Smith maybe?) claimed that by merely repeatedly watching the "perfect form" displayed by the tennis players on the video (Stan Smith, Billie Jean King, et al.), then slowly practicing that form yourself, you could improve your game dramatically. I forget what he called it but it was something like "neuro-muscular programming" or muscle memory training. Maybe it really works... I didn't really see any improvement though, but it might take a lot more than the measly amount of time & effort I put into it.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
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Deja vu, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
by perdida
(revlucion@journaSPAMlist.com)
on Friday February 02, @04:07PM EST
(#31)
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This must be where deja vu comes from.
But deja vu evokes such subtle, inexplicable emotions from the strangest things.
How do these recognition patterns work? I dispute the fact that our recognition is based on something as simple and easily broken down as individual visual moments.
I think there is a uniqueness to everyone's interpretation of the world, and that it is probably a mistake to put so much emphasis on recognition cues picked up from others. I don't want to get mystical here (unless you consider psychology mystical) but the very act of recognition can be fraught with psychological connotations, provoking memories and associations.
People who have sexual fetishes, for instance, get a sexual response to contact with certain items or materials. For them, certain items are associated with things that usually have nothing to do with their original purpose. How could this happen if our communication, and the meaning of things in the outside world, comes entirely from other people?
Inaugural Streaker defeats Secret Service |
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- Re:Deja vu, etc. by Psycho Boy Jack (Score:1) Friday February 02, @04:13PM EST
- Re:Deja vu, etc. by seanmeister (Score:2) Friday February 02, @04:24PM EST
- Re:Deja vu, etc. by cje (Score:2) Friday February 02, @04:27PM EST
- DEJA VU! by UnkyHerb (Score:1) Friday February 02, @05:01PM EST
- Deja vu: What is it? by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Friday February 02, @06:23PM EST
- Re:Deja vu, etc. by wfaulk (Score:1) Friday February 02, @04:58PM EST
- 1 reply
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Criminology - personal freedoms (Score:2, Interesting)
by nrftwicked on Friday February 02, @04:07PM EST
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I wonder what this means for people who have large numbers of these types of neurons and can somehow be proven to empathize with certain roles in an interaction. IE, if it can be shown that a person physiologically empathizes more with the attacker than the victim in some sort of altercation, would governments want to use that as a way to discriminate against that person in a court room?
Silly rabbit, *nix are for kids. |
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Mirror Idiots (Score:2, Funny)
by tazmaster on Friday February 02, @04:09PM EST
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So, to recognize an idiot you have to have been one? Makes you think twice about flaming :)
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Wow, what a break thru for AI (Score:1)
by cavemanf16
(cavemanf16@yahoo.NOSPAM.com)
on Friday February 02, @04:12PM EST
(#41)
(User #303184 Info)
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This sounds like a great development for designing more 'interactive' computing. Sure, it's not going to create a robot that I love on a spiritual/emotional level per say, but it has some far reaching applicability towards computer AI. For if a computer can truly 'anticipate' what I'm going to do based on a set of simulated mirror neurons in its neural network computing structure, what's to stop computing speed increasing at the same rate it does today. Androids, helper software 'bots', etc. would all become a reality in a treuer, more natural form than today's complex AI algorithms. They would also run faster as they would not be evaluating millions of lines of code on what to do next, they would just... know!
"Nangi namaj perez, Pray Naked." - 77's |
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Media violence (Score:4, Interesting)
by Erasmus Darwin on Friday February 02, @04:12PM EST
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| While I'm personally more of a "free speech" type and dislike the
efforts being made to cut down on "violent" television, movies, games,
etc., this research does provide ammunition for arguments that could
be used as another link between media violence and real violence.
Besides the traditional desensitization, this seems to indicate that
stabbing someone and watching someone get stabbed would both trigger
some common neurons.
I'm curious, however, if they are differences in the mirror neuron
activation between a real-world event and an event watched on
television. If there's a lesser mirroring effect with a
two-dimensional image, that might serve to at least partially deflect
the arguments against media violence that refer to mirror neurons.
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Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
by fantom_winter on Friday February 02, @04:13PM EST
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| This is interesting, because there are neurological disorders in which people are unable to attribute mental states to other people (Autism) and there hasn't been a really good explination for the problem. One person wrote a book called "Mindblindness" which discussed the very problem, and his answer was a theory of mind that was compartmentalized, meaning that there were different parts of the brain that performed specific fucntions, and that an autistic person brain was missing or had problems with that particular region.
However, if there are cells like this, it would go further in explaining this problem as well as possibly diagnosing it. If these cells are clustered in one area of the brain, it would go a long way to showing that the brain is compartmentalized in that way, vs. being more of a pure neural network kind of idea that others believe.
This discovery may have very severe impacts on the philosophy of mind and discussions of Neuroscience. The problem of "other minds" has long been an issue for the eliminative materialist, and such a cell's discovery gives them something to talk about when a cartesial dualist asks them about it.
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- Re:Interesting by jpritikin (Score:1) Friday February 02, @04:27PM EST
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
by Golias on Friday February 02, @04:36PM EST
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| Actually, there have been some very good explanations for mental states along the lines of autism. Generally, it is a failure of the part of the brain which allows people to shift their attention quickly. Since the "tells" of a person's mood are often subtle, brief, and varied, a person who has difficutly shifting the focus of their attention tends to have a problem with empathy. Slashdot has, on occation in the past, linked to studies that showed that the sort of people who are usually known as "nerds" are likely to suffer from a mild form of this disorder. The lack of easy empathy makes them social outcasts, but the slowly-shifting focus allows them to stay up all night hacking code while heavy metal blares in the background to keep their heart rates up. The average non-nerd, even if fairly bright, is less likely to stare at a flickering cathode ray for hours at the best of times, let alone when distracted by loud music. The rare "idiot savant" cases have also been linked with this phenomenon.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized. |
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- Thinking in Pictures by wytcld (Score:2) Friday February 02, @06:31PM EST
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Experimental artefact. (Score:4, Insightful)
by Lita Juarez
(juarezl@SPAMMENOT.edu)
on Friday February 02, @04:14PM EST
(#49)
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| I think that the real reason that these neural signals seem so "novel" to the researchers is because the signals are actually not present at all. It is more likely that the signals that the researchers measured were artefacts. Due to the huge density of neurons in the cortex (they were measuring signals in the frontal cortex), there is a real risk that a poorly designed configuration of recording electrodes could measure local currents from neighbouring regions of the cortex. These local currents could easily be incorrectly attributed to the existance of "mirror cells".
There is no functionality provided by these supposed "mirror cells" that can not be explained by the already well documented phenomenon of "conditioned response". If mirror cells really did exist, do you seriously suppose that in over 100 years of electroencephalography no-one would have detected them before? I am confident that this reasearch will be proved to be fundamentally flawed upon deeper investigation.
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Required for meme replication? (Score:5, Interesting)
by Cato
(rdonkin@SPAMLESSbigfoot.com)
on Friday February 02, @04:15PM EST
(#51)
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Susan Blackmore's excellent book, The Meme Machine, proposes the idea that imitation (of specific actions or behaviours) is at the heart of meme replication. The idea is that you see or hear someone humming a certain tune, and that meme hops neatly into your brain; imitation is the key, i.e. your brain now makes you able to hum the same tune, even if you don't do it straight away. The same arguments apply to art, language, music, and trolling on Slashdot :)
The interesting bit is that her hypothesis has generated testable predictions, including one that specific brain mechanisms would be found that support imitation. It looks like mirror neurons are such a mechanism, supporting her ideas.
Amazon.com has some interesting review comments on this book, see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019286212X/
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Implications (Score:1)
by Goronguer on Friday February 02, @04:16PM EST
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This research would have interesting implications concerning the link between violence on TV and in movies . . .
EXCEPT for the fact that this research seems utterly and completely bogus.
Did anyone else notice how goofy the illustrations that accompanied the article were?
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Porn Industry (Score:1)
by antis0c
(zerotech@net.anti)
on Friday February 02, @04:17PM EST
(#54)
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I can think of hundreds of applications this would have in the Porn Industry...
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin' |
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Mirror rorriM (Score:1)
by banuaba
(wonko@EAT_MY_SPAMMY_ASS.thedark.com)
on Friday February 02, @04:19PM EST
(#57)
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Now, as far as I can understand, these 'mirror cells' are supposed to behave as if we were experiencing the thing we were watching. Take the aforementioned 'America's funniest home videos'.
So this donkey tries to do some guy in the pooper, I find that pants-peeingly funny, but if I was the one who the donkey was molesting, I'd be a little bit scared and a lot pissed off (and maybe just a wee smidge turned on..). That isn't mirroring my reaction to the occurence, it has a completely different affect.
Or perhaps I'm just missing some huge point of the study.
Brant
Oh, and I don't know if anyone's seen that video, but the best part is that you can hear the cameraman laughing his ass off and the camera shaking as his friend runs for his poor, poor life.
the less a man makes declarative statements, the less likely he is to look like a fool. |
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Brain mirroring? (Score:1)
by mons on Friday February 02, @04:22PM EST
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Does that means I can mirror my brain when it gets /.ed?
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Sad (Score:1)
by packphour
(ILoveHateMail@127.0.0.1)
on Friday February 02, @04:22PM EST
(#61)
(User #257276 Info)
http://packphour.com
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| "COOL PEOPLE IN THE HOT DESERT..."
The sad thing is that their sole purpose for setting up their labs in the desert is that by chance some reporter would use that headline.
You think their excitement is in regards to the Mirror cells breakthrough? Wrong, they're just happy some f'ing journalist finally wrote "COOL PEOPLE IN THE HOT DESERT."
-p4
(c) All Rights Released. |
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Proof (Score:1)
by djrogers on Friday February 02, @04:24PM EST
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Proof of this phenomenon can be found in the male groin. No, not that way - What I mean is look at the way a room of guys reacts when another guy get kicked in the nuts!
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AI? (Score:1)
by tethal91 on Friday February 02, @04:28PM EST
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I wonder if researchers will be able to one day use this type of recognition paradigm for advanced, intuitive artificial intelligence. I think that it is not too early to begin thinking about making out thinking technology not want to hurt us later on. You just know that are machines are going to want to kill us some day...
There is no guarantee that the content has been read or understood.
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Site's already /.'d (Score:1)
by Rude Turnip
(jlx2136@please.no.spam.fast.net)
on Friday February 02, @04:35PM EST
(#85)
(User #49495 Info)
http://127.0.0.1
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Can someone post a ..... hehe :-)
The cure for 1984 is 1917. |
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source? (Score:2)
by Pfhreakaz0id
(joeblow47@THISWORDOPTIONALhotmail.com)
on Friday February 02, @04:35PM EST
(#86)
(User #82141 Info)
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And exactly what scientific, peer-reviewed journal did this appear in? Did I just miss the citation? If not, who cares...
---
"No time for lollygaggin', I gots dwawdlin' ta do!" -- Tigger |
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- Re:source? by joto (Score:2) Friday February 02, @06:05PM EST
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True P2P? (Score:1)
by B14ckH013Sur4
(bobbySPAMfuesz@excSPAMite.com)
on Friday February 02, @04:37PM EST
(#91)
(User #234255 Info)
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Now that we'll have directions for mind-reading (well sometime in the future), does a group of /.ers in one room qualify as a Beowulf cluster?
"Fuck off Gates, I'm with a client..." -my new favorite punchline.
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That's a Neural Net, for ya (Score:1)
by ZahrGnosis
(chip@chiplynch.com)
on Friday February 02, @04:40PM EST
(#95)
(User #66741 Info)
http://www.chiplynch.com
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Sure, why is this curious? The mechanism may be interesting, and full props to the biologists, but isn't this what we expect?
We've long known that humans learn by imitation; the way a neural net (like the brain) knows to compare its action to those it imitates is to compare the neurons that fire... fire the same ones and you've successfully imitated. Fire the wrong ones and you did something wrong.
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that's not science (Score:2)
by canning on Friday February 02, @04:41PM EST
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A Child watches her mother pick up a toy. The child smiles:
Mom's picking up all my crap. I rule
A husband watches his wife pluck car keys from a table. He shivers:
Time to call the boys for some poker and football, I can hardly wait!
A nurse watches a needle being jabbed into an elderly patient. She flinches:
Dammit!! I hate that old bastard, next time I want to do it.
Yesterday it worked,
Today it's not,
Windows is like that.
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More subtle than that (Score:1)
by heike on Friday February 02, @04:44PM EST
(#100)
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| I don't think these mirror cells can explain
all, there's also a factor of culture and
previous experience in it.
When a child sees mom pick up the toy,
and smiles, it's because that's what
the child has learned before: pick up
the toy and have fun.
When you see someone play with a sharp
blade, you shiver, because you know
what the potential consequence could be.
But Tarzan may not experience the same
feeling, because he has no idea what
the shiny thing is.
When I look at a group of Italians talking,
I'm not sure if this is just a normal
conversation or if they are having
a fight, because they are talking so
loud (if not yelling) and articulating
wildly. That's because I don't have
an Italian background. And maybe,
in my cultural background, that would
qualify as a fight.
There's a tribe in Africa (forgot the
name) where nodding means "no" and shaking
head means "yes". So, with a completely
different background, you might
misinterprete quite a lot of things.
That's why understanding each other, or
at learn taking the effort to do so,
is so important.
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Dr. E.L. Kerstan already discovered this!!! :-( (Score:1)
by JohnDenver
(spamspamspamhamandspam@hormel.com)
on Friday February 02, @04:46PM EST
(#101)
(User #246743 Info)
http://www.hormel.com/
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http://www.despair.com/connot.html
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Implications Beyond Autism (Score:1)
by west on Friday February 02, @04:49PM EST
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Taking this speculation several steps further: If autism is the failure of these mirror neurons to work properly, what's the effect on individuals in cases where they are super-abundunt? ESP (or more accurately, the appearance of it) anyone?
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The real question (Score:3, Interesting)
by sanemind
(spamme@rhodes.mine.nu)
on Friday February 02, @04:59PM EST
(#113)
(User #155251 Info)
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The real question is whether or not the observed neural firing is actually some genetically hardwired process in the brain, part of the underlying archetecture of consciousness... or whether it is instead merely an emergent and learned behavior.
The fact that a experimentally verifiable pattern can be measured does not necessarily demonstrate whether or not the ability is genetically determined. Put electrodes in the cortex of someone doing advanced calculus, and you will likely see a repeatable firing of certain neurons in correlation to certain mathematical notions., even though the symbolic system of math is entirely a cultural construction.
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the pen is mighter then the sword. the sword is mighter then the court. the court is mighter then the pen. |
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Are we fundamentally Good or Evil? (Score:2, Insightful)
by blamario on Friday February 02, @05:01PM EST
(#114)
(User #227479 Info)
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| I find this very interesting, this could be the first time that natural science has found something really important to social sciences and philosophy.
I always thought empathy could be the basic notion of ethics. You suffer when you see somebody else suffer, and you feel better when you see somebody else's joy. Therefore when you act to help others, it's actually selfish in a way - you'll feel somewhat better too, not because you're condititioned so by parents and society (Freud's superego) but because of your fundamental biology.
If this is true then humans are in essence good after all. Maybe society is not making us better, maybe it's making us worse.
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Interesting, but... (Score:2)
by evanbd
(my.nickname@pobox.com)
on Friday February 02, @05:09PM EST
(#120)
(User #210358 Info)
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| I think people are missing the point here, mainly because the article does somewhat too. I recently learned in an intro class on the mind (covering philosophy, psychology, neurobiology, drugs, and other related subjects in a fashion that gets depth on many specific areas; very cool class) about mirror neurons. I don't have the source, but the teacher implied that they have been reasonable well known in monkeys for some time.
The new part of this is twofold: the discovery of evidence for the presence of mirror neurons in humans, and the realtionship with language. The scientists seem to be saying that mirror neurons provide a common understanding that is the basis of communication and language and empathy, and that I think is interesting -- to see something that had been connected with imitation and learning tied so closely to language.
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Social Identity Neurons and Autism (Score:2)
by Baldrson
(jim_bowery@hotmail.com)
on Friday February 02, @05:09PM EST
(#121)
(User #78598 Info)
http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery
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| A hypothesis for the sincere to consider:
A great deal of extended phenotypics in humans is grounded in the manipulation of mirror neurons of susceptible populations. Autism, in particular, is symptomatic of genetically recessive populations that are experiencing extended genetic dominance -- autism being a pathological byproduct of the imperfect intervention in social identity mechanisms that normally produce such extended phenotypic social structures as religions, bodies politic, etc.
The inappropriate attention historically given to autism and mirror neurons by the academic establishment is an indirect result of the genetic interest among urban elites in maintaining the extended phenotypic social structures that rely on the manipulation of mirror neuronal responses. Recent defections by Italians and Jews (e.g: Vittorio Gallese, Giacomo Rizzolatti and their colleagues at the University of Parma and Hugh Fudenberg), ethnic groups that have historically been the prime beneficiaries of such urbanizing social structures in the West, are being driven by the increasing presence of Dravidians (V.S. Ramachandran and Vijendra K. Singh) whose group is not as dependent on the existing extended phenotypic structures of JudeoChristian civilization, and whose relatedness to the recessive European populations, combined with their own genetic dominance, creates a unique relationship with northern European ethnicities -- the primary victims of autism in the U.S.
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Involuntary movements (Score:3, Funny)
by Shotgun on Friday February 02, @05:10PM EST
(#122)
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Anyone else here find themselves dodging their heads when playing video games like Doom? When watching others play?
My wife laughs at me when my boys wrestle. I'm twisting and feinting in what I think they should be doing. The bad part is that I don't even realize that I'm doing it.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba |
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Couldn't this just be memory? (Score:1)
by Happy Monkey on Friday February 02, @05:55PM EST
(#145)
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Unless this is the first time the stimulus was given to the subjects, how do we know that both results are not just the memory of it happening to us? The results given when the stimulus is applied to the subject could be a memory of the last time it happened to the subject - I know I have the same reaction when I see someone get a hypodermic shot as I do just before (rather than as) I get the shot myself. It's certainly empathy, but rather than two events using the same part of the brain, they could both be the same event.
___
Length 17, Width 3 |
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mirror cells in early learning (Score:2, Interesting)
by radialphish on Friday February 02, @06:11PM EST
(#150)
(User #266603 Info)
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Language is a good idea of the application of these "mirror" neurons. But basically what these types of neurons seem to do is to relate and create (or at least learn) the physcological concept of having a hand and immediatly being able to use it. It's like when a baby finds its hands for the first time by looking at others and then looking at themself. Instead of firing at random, they now represent discrete concepts -- moving your hand, picking something up, etc.
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there are no "mirror cells" (Score:1)
by bhny on Friday February 02, @06:44PM EST
(#156)
(User #97647 Info)
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It's an old fallacy when studying the brain to attribute a specific function to a cell.
In cognitive science this is known as the "grandmother cell". i.e. one neuron is designed to fire when it sees a grandmother.
In truth one neuron is part of a network that does many things. The neurons that are involved with movement are also used to recognize, imagine or remember the same movement. There are no "grandmother" cells and there are no "mirror" cells.
Nature will use the same thing for many different purposes. This is what makes the brain so hard to understand.
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Evolution Theory (Score:2, Interesting)
by max99ted on Friday February 02, @06:44PM EST
(#157)
(User #192208 Info)
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| Read this in a book that I can't recall the title of...
It theoried that the 'leap' in human evolution was partially due to the environmental changes that occurred during the
time frame mentioned in the essay (100k-40k years ago). The forthcoming Ice Age was cooling the planet and 'humans', who were surviving for the greater percentage of time in trees,
were forced aground in search of food. While this was necessary, it also exposed them to
various predators (lions, etc) - forcing the humans to travel together, hunt together, and in all likelihood, develop a sophisticated communcations system together.
Perhaps this can lend some insight into why the sudden leap in intellectual evolution didn't occur earlier in our history,
as the article mentioned that our brains have been at approximately the same
intellectual level for the last 250k years.
Of course I am no expert in this field so feel free to disagree :)
Reality is the leading cause of stress for those who are in touch with it. |
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Is this why /. lacks creativity? (Score:1)
by JudgePagLIVR on Friday February 02, @07:09PM EST
(#161)
(User #145069 Info)
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"He says mirror neurons and the way they facilitate imitative learning help to explain why we only developed things like tool use, art and mathematics about 40,000 years ago, despite the fact that our brains had reached their full size some 150,000 years earlier. These cultural inventions, he contends, probably popped up accidentally, but they were disseminated quickly because of our amazing, imitative, learning brains--made possible by a more sophisticated version of the monkey mirror neuron system."
Is this why so few people can come up with anything more original than "frist psot" or "hot grits"?
Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed |
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Mirror cells, eh? (Score:2, Funny)
by xkenny13 on Friday February 02, @07:16PM EST
(#163)
(User #309849 Info)
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/1369/
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So, is this the root of copy cat crimes? :-)
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This idea has been proposed before (Score:1)
by kurisuto
(kurisuto@unagi.cis.upenn.SPAMFREE.edu)
on Friday February 02, @08:05PM EST
(#166)
(User #165784 Info)
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto
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| The central question here has been around in linguistics for a while, specifically in the area of phonetics.
The question is how we perceive speech. Do we directly process the chirps and hisses and buzzes which make up human speech, mapping those sounds directly to words in our mental dictionaries? Or do we start by reconstructing the gestures in the mouth which produced the sounds we hear, and then look up the words in our mental dictionaries based on those reconstructed gestures?
The finding reported in this article is consistent with the latter view.
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not really new idea (Score:1)
by vla1den on Friday February 02, @08:15PM EST
(#167)
(User #233261 Info)
http://denissov.com/
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The idea is a bit old. Handwriting recognition algorithms actually used it
already years ago. Here is how it works:
In order to recognize handwriting human brain simulate the process of writing
that is it's trying to imagine "what I would do to create this". That is recognition
happening in terms of text creation. That is some neurons "... fire both when
you perform an action and when you observe someone else performing that action."
(or even just see the result of their performing) Handwriting recognition programs
just mimic this process that is they are trying to distinguish letters by recognizing
primitive creation movements.
I've learned all this in university about 9 years ago. Here are some additional
examples of the same brain phenomena (also 9 years old):
- Pianist moves his fingers when he listens to music;
- People can be more effectively taught to read handwriting if they move
stylus along the thread of the text they are reading
...what the next best thing is going to be? |
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Proof of ESP? (Score:1)
by thogard on Friday February 02, @08:44PM EST
(#168)
(User #43403 Info)
http://web.abnormal.com
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I suspect the EPS people are going to love this.
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The Chicken or the Egg: The Sapience or the Cell? (Score:1)
by blair1q on Friday February 02, @08:50PM EST
(#169)
(User #305137 Info)
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I can see how we'd have some neurons that fire when we observe someone else doing something. But when we do something, are those neurons firing because we are doing it? Or are they firing because we observe ourselves doing it?
If the former, then these neurons are probably parts of our ability to learn by mimicry. If the latter, then perhaps they are also the crux of self-awareness.
Most animals can learn by mimicry. Evolution would take advantage of such a thing. But if this neural system is involved in mimicry and self-awareness, then perhaps we sorely underestimate the self-awareness of most of the animal kingdom.
--Blair
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The Music Man was right (Score:2)
by scruffy on Friday February 02, @08:51PM EST
(#170)
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All you need to do is practice in your head.
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low to high level. (Score:1)
by lobiusmoop on Friday February 02, @08:58PM EST
(#171)
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I love the way that the neurologists are mapping neural activity to sociology, XOR gates to excel spreadsheets, 100 billion independant computational units working together to generate the macroscopic human condition. This is just getting empathy down to the neural level.
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Big deal (Score:1)
by ScottMaxwell on Friday February 02, @09:59PM EST
(#175)
(User #108831 Info)
http://www.ScottMaxwell.org/
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| From the article:
Luciano Fadiga [...] measured the excitability of
particular muscles in the hand. He found that when the volunteers were
watching grasping actions, the very muscles that would be needed to
copy that movement seemed primed to act--as if they were preparing to
make the same movement themselves.
How exciting: they discovered body English. Their next experiment
will show that when your bowling ball is headed for the gutter, you
lean in the other direction and make encouraging noises.
;-)
--
``Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.'' -- Richard Dawkins |
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Wonderful and Amazing... (Score:1)
by GeneralEmergency
(mcswain@alanmcswain.com)
on Friday February 02, @11:03PM EST
(#179)
(User #240687 Info)
http://www.alanmcswain.com
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As with many programmers, I too yearn to give my creations the cognitive powers that I myself posses and I do think on this subject often... ...until I am stopped by realization that my brain is actually trying to figure out how it itself works.
Then I become humbled by the majesty of it all.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
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Trivial (Score:1)
by exa
(erayo@NOSPAM.cs.bilkent.edu.tr)
on Saturday February 03, @07:02AM EST
(#189)
(User #27197 Info)
http://cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo
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Nothing more. Neuroscientists are blind people trying to find their way in a vast maze. I pity most of them.
These people still have not understood that representation and computation are what makes the mind tick. Yes, when a subsystem, say which is responsible for assessing motion, is invoked it is highly probable that the same neurons will be excited when the individual or some other individual makes a move. And the only reason for this comes from the fact that it would be unwise to duplicate the same subsystem for perception of yourself and others. I may not have put this point too clearly but the simple argument goes: Assume there is a function I(x) in your brain: it is responsible for "understanding" motion attributed to a species. Say of "apes". Assume further that you are an ape, too.
Now, whenever you do a motion, you track your own motion. Therefore, you have to interpret it. I(x) does that. When some other ape acts in a way that you can detect visually, you apply the same interpretation function I(x) for the other individual. Thus, there is nothing fundamental or novel about the so-called mirror cell. Extend the argument to your liking.
Thanks,
--exa--
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24 replies
beneath your current threshold.
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Posted by Hemos on Friday February 02, @03:52PM
"Mirror cells" May Be Key To Communication