Mirror Neurons

Mirror Neurons

Before reading the following, please click the above link

and this one

A Discussion on a New York Times article

The implications of the notion of mirror neurons for psychology are enormous, in light of this the regular understanding of psychological concepts such as bonding, projection, learning, transference, empathy/apathy/sympathy, obsession, compulsion, being 'anal' - all that and more - needs to be reviewed.
Now that we may have some physio-biological understanding behind the process of possible automatic absorption of what children 'see' and how they subsequently 'may' feel prompted to act out what they are watching as they are duplicating and replicating what they are watching, this understanding may even form some basis for discussing serious guidelines or policies - even formal legislation - to limit access to violent depictions in the media of plays, games or TV shows aimed at young children,

The following TED presentation by VS Ramachandran may point at when the human mind came into play after the brain was already formed (Lamarckian evolution - mutation). 
There are about 5 different but related themes touched upon in this fast 7 minute talk from: 'learning by mirroring' to 'phantom limbs', via 'oneness and separation'... and perhaps the notion how the mind is totally and integrally connected to physiology... Skin receptors make the difference!
"The neurons that shaped civilization about 100.000 years ago."
Click TED Presentation by VS Ramachandran


Some questions around this

• Is it necessarily so that children 'w i l l' act out those mirrored observations?
• There is the expression 'monkey see, monkey do', but with humans, can that as easily be translated into 'child see, child do' or in a broader sense 'human see, human do', or is it for humans perhaps 'human see, human may or may not do'?
• Is there is a 'control of error' mechanism built into or around this mirror neuronic infrastructure? Or - if there is no such thing built in - is it that, why we have the conventional and more or less tested moral codes acting as a set of checks and balances?
  I myself believe that there is something structurally built-in around mirror nearons that acts as a 'control of error' (I'm thinking along the lines of Montessorians, to which 'control of error' comes naturally without saying), something of which more conventional moral codes may be watered down copies that have been reprogrammed to attain ulterior goals that do not necessarily benefit the individual itself but something or someone else that is made to feel more important or greater than the individual (kind of like the 'Nazi ideal', cultic zealot, or the 'suicide hero')
• Are we ready for a possible paradigm shift in education and culture cultivating...?
• Even some popular notions developed by Piaget, some of his conclusions may also have to be thoroughly reviewed. (Some of which even became urban myths... and urban myths are so resilient... Maybe there are specialized mirror neurons that turn modeling based on flawed thinking - when it is brought forward 'cleverly and craftily' - into urban-mythical post-conceptions or maybe even cultural pre-conceptions.)
• Can we implant new mirror neurons? Should we?
• Can we replace those neurons that replicated/duplicated less savory or less acceptable impressions and thus produced less beneficial social behavior? Should we?
• Can we fix the broken neurons? Should we?
• Can we now also find out what actually causes autism, obsessive compulsive disorders and even... sociopathic or psychopathic behavior?
• How do we influence each other's moods, can we protect ourselves from being influenced
• 'Spells', 'mesmerizing', 'black magic' - does this makes use of mirror neuron dynamics?  

A consideration - are certain kinds of mirror neurons only 'proposal' neurons?

There is an issue not touched upon in depth yet when it comes to mirror neurons: is there not a certain 'proposal' or 'proto type' quality to what mirror neurons duplicate/replicate?
There could of course be different types of mirror neurons, some more absolute in their power to duplicate and force replication, and some only having a function to offer optional action, proposing action, a model that could be copied and duplicated?

So far, the way I see it, in humans there seems to be a choice somewhere in the individual:

• to take the impressions seriously and follow up on them as though they were one's own
• or to hold them in abeyance for the time being and not choosing - after certain considerations - to act them out in perpetuity and 'thoughtlessly'?

More questions from this:

• Is that where consciousness comes in and following from that, conscience or moral considerations?
• And IF there is an 'observer' to all this, a 'witness', how is that witness/observer present, does the possible presence of the witness fade or return after fading?What is it, if so, what makes that occur?
• How do we forget?
• If we believe that they can be stopped, how do say 'compulsive actions' or addictions stop, as a result therapy, meditation or whatever we do to become less driven by or attached to our them?
• What have we done with those mirror neurons when we deactivated, say, addiction (if we did :) if those mirror neurons were involved in creating obsessive compulsive behavior?!

An answer already?

For me one answer is showing up already, let me try it. 
It has to do with identification, which by itself is GOOD as there is in principle nothing wrong with identification!!! However, when individual identification gets adulterated (from the Latin ad-alterare) with 'alien' identities that are pressed upon it by fear and social pressure, the original identification gets tainted or enveloped by the additional exterior descriptive packaging and then turns into adverse non authentic behavior... the pseudo self or the usual state of conflict that someone is in, someone who is not 'feeling him or herself' - who lost touch with their core and does not live directly from it. The tainting or enveloping is brought about by verbal sentencing or ambiguous labeling.

• When we say "pig" to a little piggy that we may be holding on our lap, then the word "pig" is not a lie, it is a NOUN, and 'as that' it is simply a sound that symbolically labels the oinking thing on our lap. "Pig" means nothing more or nothing less than that what it symbolizes. In principle there are no secondary meanings to nouns applied this way... they are 'eigen' labels (German 'eigentlich').
  (Is it that is what the biblical Adam did, so to speak? Was he simply tagging when he was naming?)
  Identification with labels that way IS NOT detrimental, these labels it don't describe, they are sound stamp'.
• However... When we have a child on our lap, and we label it with an ADJECTIVE (one part of a set of dualistic opposites. e.g. good or bad, or dirty or clean) AND/OR a NOUN which the child may have heard (or will hear) also applied as a label to another thing say "PIG" or "PAL" or "SQUIRT" then a self identity conflict is created, as the child will now identify with ambiguity... eventually, especially after a few repeats, leading to not feeling him or herself, the identities are confused and confusable.
  Identifications with such labels ARE detrimental... they describe and alter (the meaning of 'adulterate'), they might lead to judgments away from the simple statements, they are not 'sound stamps', they are something that possibly mark the child as that what it is not: 'Being-who-one-is-that-one-is' is then challenged and traumatized. How to undo that... how to undo that pseudo ambiguous self (German 'uneigentlich sein')? Sitting simply and congruently in oneself (maybe return to the lap and getting simply and unambiguously relabeled, de-identified and re-identified) 'unsaying-oneself', unsaying the conflicted/conflicting identity meanings!!!Maybe the thing to do then is... applying silence that may help the un-wording, erase ambiguous labeling... the echo fading and disappearing.

Echo Neurons and Mirror Neurons?

I anticipated something like mirror neurons but called them 'echo cells' as I was at some point more interested in the onomatopoeic phenomenon in human speech.
Renaming the 'mirror neuron' to 'mirror/echo neurons' maybe be an idea worth considering as it might open a wider vista allowing us to find clearer answers sooner, or, if not that, than at least better questions may arise that may lead to better answers. So, if we, instead of  just using the word, "MIRROR" neuron, we use the word "MIRROR/ECHO" neuron, we might pick up on a different model for understanding this neuronal duplication phenomenon and come up with questions like:

• Is there a 'fade' effect? (As in the theory of sound: 'attack', 'sustain', 'decay'.
• Are there built in volume, loudness or intensity controls?
• Do initial 'impressions' - when they are verbal or auditory they are called 'engrams' - need to be re-struck like we can strike a bell again, to stay active? 

Based on the following article I now think that 'mirror/echo neurons' would be a more suitable comprehensive nomenclature.
Obviously two senses are involved visual (mirror) and auditory (echo). They are distinct from other senses  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense) in that they are remote sensing... as no physical contact is involved (no tactile, gustatory, olfactory contact.  Smelling involves molecular contact within the nose, so I don't consider the olfactory sense a remote sensing tool per se.)

Click here to read a very good good article

(For the 'mirror neuron' discussion in it scroll down to page 6 and look for "Mirror,  Mirror")

Comments on this article (all underlining is mine):

"Rizzolatti's group recently reported that the macaque has "audiovisual" mirror neurons: Some of the cells in F5 fire not only when a macaque watches a meaningful grasping action, but when it hears the sound of one, such as the sound of breaking peanuts."

Notice the word grasping above, in my 'brain/mind theory I consider 'mind' (Skt. 'manas') to be derived from the PIE root *man (cf. 'la main' Fr. - hand) being involved in mental development...
Thus my 'brain/mind and hand go hand-in-hand'

My brain/mind theory includes a rather axiomatic:

1. There is no mental activity without a thought, 
2. There is no thought without verbal content, 
3. There is no verbal content without sensorial recording,  
4. There is no sensorial recoding without matter...

Thus for humans 'matter, hand and mind go hand-in-hand'

Except for "Ouch" :), the earliest and simplest words derived from onomatopoeic sound-mimicry by means of what are now called mirror neurons... which I at some point identified as 'echo cells'.

"...mirror neurons are found in brain areas responsible for grasping. "I think it's extremely likely that language evolved in our early ancestors as a manual system , not as a vocal one" "
~ Corballis."

But partially overlapping that manual system, a verbal/mental one developed over time, using:

'words-verbalized-aloud-or-muted-as-thoughts' 

"But others believe equally strongly that even if movement and language are inseparable, language is primarily an oral, not manual , behavior. Psychologist Peter MacNeilage of the University of Texas, Austin, has developed a theory that monkey oral behaviors (not vocalizations) are precursors of human syllables, and he argues that the mirror neuron system--especially the recent discovery of neurons that respond to lip smacking and nut cracking--bolsters his ideas."

Primarily an oral, not manual, behavior should of course read "primarily an oral, not primarily a manual behavior".
The oral  aspect is not at the exclusion of the manual aspect!

The syllables idea is almost right, instead of syllables though, abugida type of languages (such as Sanskrit) use consonant–vowel units (when written they consist of consonant-vowel notations). These units tend to be onomatopoeic.

The fact that the early human adopted a partial nocturnal (eve and dawn) living style (night falls at 6PM and day breaks at 6 AM in tropical regions - it only takes five minutes for the falling and breaking!) caused the visible gestures to have to be replaced by audible voices.
Communicative gesture HAD to be replaced by communicative sound.