social cognition → mirror neurones

The mirror neurone system 

The mirror neurone system consists of special brain cells called mirror neurones distributed in several areas of the brain. 

Mirror neurones are unique because they fire both in response to personal action and in response to the action on the part of others. 

These special neurones may be involved in social cognition allowing us to interpret intention and emotion in others. 

It seems likely that mirror neurones are involved in the social cognition process of empathy, understanding intention, perspective taking and theory of mind. 

Mirror neurones are nerves in the brain that activate both when specific actions are performed and observed being performed by others. 

They may allow individuals to empathise with others and imitate them. Therefore, they allow them to have ToM, take another’s perspective, etc.  

Research support for the role of mirror neurones: 

Mouras (2008) -> when males heterosexual men watched either heterosexual pornography, a fishing documentary or Mr Bean. Brain activity was measuring with an fMRI and arousal by a sensitive penis ring. Activity in the pars opercularis (rich in mirror neurones) was seen immediately before sexual arousal. This suggests that mirror neurones produced perspective taking, making the pornography arousing. 

This study suggests the importance of mirror neurones in social cognition showing that regions of the brain believed to be rich in mirror neurones activate when empathy or perspective taking takes place. 

The discovery of mirror neurones  

Rizzolatti et al. (2002) were studying electrical activity in a monkey's motor cortex (the part of the brain controlling movement) when one of the researchers reached for his lunch in view of the monkey. This monkey's motor cortex became activated in exactly the same way as it did when the animal itself reached for food. Further investigation revealed that it was in fact the same brain cells that fired when the monkey reached itself or watched someone else reach. The researchers called these cells mirror neurons because the neurons mirror motor activity in another individual. 

AO3 - strength of mirror neurones: research support for the role of mirror neurones

Mouras (2008) -> when males heterosexual men watched either heterosexual pornography, a fishing documentary or Mr Bean. Brain activity was measuring with an fMRI and arousal by a sensitive penis ring. Activity in the pars opercularis (rich in mirror neurones) was seen immediately before sexual arousal. This suggests that mirror neurones produced perspective taking, making the pornography arousing. 

This study suggests the importance of mirror neurones in social cognition showing that regions of the brain believed to be rich in mirror neurones activate when empathy or perspective taking takes place. 

Mirror neurones and intention  

Gallese and Goldman (1998) suggests that mirror neurones respond not just to observed actions but to intentions behind behaviour. 

We need to understand the intentions of others in order to interact socially. 

Research on mirror neurone suggests that we actually stimulate the actions of others in our own brains and thus experience their intention through our mirror neurones. 

Mirror neurones and perspective taking 

It has also been suggested that mirror neurones are important in other social cognitive functions, e.g. theory of mind and ability to take other’s perspective. 

If mirror neurones fire in response to other’s actions and intentions this gives a neural mechanism for experiencing, and hence understanding, other people’s perspectives and emotional states. 

Just as we can stimulate intention by making judgement based on our own reflected motor responses, the same info may allow us to interpret what others are thinking and feeling. 

It has also been suggested that mirror neurones play important role in perspective taking and ToM. Mirror neurones can fire in response to other’s actions and intentions and this underlies ToM. 

Mirror neurones may be key to human social evolution 

Ramachandran (2001) suggested that mirror neurones are so important they have shaped human evolution, in particular how we have evolved as a social species. 

Mirror neurones enable us to understand intention, emotion and perspective. These are fundamental requirements for living in large groups with complex social roles and rules that characterise human culture. 

Mirror neurones and autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) 

ASD is associated with problems related to social cognitive abilities, such as difficult with perspective taking, understanding intention, emotion and ToM. 

It follows that people with ASD might have poor mirror neurone systems. 

The ‘Broken Mirror’ Theory of ASD is based on mirror neurones  

Ramachandran and Oberman (2006) have proposed the broken mirror theory of ASD. 

According to this theory ASD develops due to neurological deficits, including dysfunction in the mirror neurone system. 

Such dysfunction prevents a child imitating and understanding social behaviours in others. 

Researchers have observed that, in infancy, children who are later diagnosed with ASD typically mimic adult behaviour less than children with no diagnosis. 

Later they experience difficulties in social communication because as children they didn’t develop the usual abilities to read intention and emotion in others. 

This may demonstrate innate problems with the mirror neurone system. 

Summary  

The mirror neuron system was identified in monkeys in the 1990s. 

These neurones fire when an animal makes a meaningful movement and also when it observes another animal making the same movement. 

Humans are also assumed to have a mirror neurone system, so that neurones involved in, for instance, producing facial expressions, fire when facial expressions are observed in others. 

This firing is thought to activate the appropriate feelings associated with that facial expression, allowing us to experience the same feelings we identify in others. 

It is assumed that this could be the foundation of our abilities to understand and empathise with others, i.e. the mirror neurone system is basic to social cognition. 

AO3 - limitation of mirror neurones: difficulties involved in studying the system in humans

Evidence for mirror neurone activity comes from brain scanning. This technique identifies activity levels in the brain but can't measure activity in individual cells. Inserting electrodes is the only way of measuring activity at a cellular level and this isn’t ethically possible in humans. 

Mirror neurone research is thus based on inferences from measuring general activity in areas of the brain and can’t as such provide direct evidence of mirror neurone activity. 

AO3 - limitation of mirror neurones: mixed evidence for the link with ASD

Hadjkikhani (2007) supports the link between ASD and mirror neurone deficits by finding a smaller thickness of the pars opercularis in ASD pps. Other studies using fMRI have also found lower activity in areas associated with mirror neurones in pps with ASD.  

COUNTER: not all such findings have been replicated so the reliability of the results remains questionable and consequently the evidence linking ASD to mirror neurones is mixed. 

AO3 - limitation of mirror neurones: the inability to distinguish mirror neurones from other neurones

Hickok (2009) questions whether mirror neurones exist. This is controversial as other researchers do believe that there are isolated mirror neurones. Hickok argues that we know mirror neurones from their function and have failed thus far to be able to identify individual cells and point to their differences from other neurones. 

This challenges the existence of specialist neurones carrying out the mirroring – but it doesn’t deny that the function described is carried out in the brain. 

AO3 - strength of mirror neurones: research support

there's evidence from neuroscience to support a role for mirror neurones in a range of human behaviours. E.g. Haker et al. (2012) scanned the brains of people as they watched a film of people yawning. Levels of activity in Broadmann’s Area 9, believed to be rich in mirror neurones, increased when pps yawned in response. Contagious yawning is widely believed to be the result of empathy, so this study links mirror neurone activity to empathy.