except for the sensationalist and misleading title they gave the article (not your fault), this is really pretty intriguing.
I predict they'll find the whole thing is much more complicated than they think it is even now.
The idea that there might be neurons that react to other people move makes sense to me. As a kid, I drove my parents a little buggy for many reasons. One of those reasons was that my speech patterns and body language would change if I started hanging out with new people - pretty quickly and dramatically. I didn't try to imitate and was mostly unaware of the changes in my speech and body language.
OTOH, figuring out other people's motivations was a source of constant puzzlement and consternation. I'm pretty good at it now, but I've arrived there solidly through the "Spock" route.
In case you don't remember or didn't know, I have some interesting neurological issues from being head-injured at birth. Definitely not Autism or Aspergers - but I definitely find a lot of common ground with Asperger folks I've known.
Thanks for finding and posting this.
Posted by Olivetta (Member # 6456) on :
Yeah, I wentthe Spock route, too.
Funny thing, My voice teacher in college (who was the lead mezzo for the Bulgarian conservatory for years, and also held a Masters in Space Engineering) used to tell me that when I sang, she could feel in her throat what was happenning in mine. Then she'd tell me how to change the feeling.
It was awesome. My singing voice still sounds like small rodents being tortured, but it wasn't her fault. Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
*giggle* When I read y'all's comments, before I read the article, I thought you were referring to Benjamin Spock, and wondered how he fit in.
A fair amount of Vulcan in my emotional modeling as well, I think.
Makes sense that many of us would say that, though. We test rather high, as a group, on Asperger's tests, neh?
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote: used to tell me that when I sang, she could feel in her throat what was happenning in mine. Then she'd tell me how to change the feeling.
Even with only a few years of training, I do this a little. I hear someone singing, and I know a little of what they're doing wrong- I flex my own throat to "fix" theirs. It's not very much, though.
Other than that, I don't know if I use the "spock" route or not. I'm fairly sure I don't.
Posted by imenimok (Member # 7679) on :
I think it's bogus. I have a friend who's got a mute French artist spider in her head telling her what to do. Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
Here's the disconnect for me:
These "mirror neurons" they've found seem to reflect actions, sensations and emotions that are observed in others.
On a personal level, this makes sense when it comes to motor activity - I unconsciously mimicked those around me. Even now, I pick up speech patterns and dialects more quickly than most people my age, but I do finally seem to have settled into a more or less stable set of speech patterns and body language.
But the same didn't hold true for sensation and emotions. There might have been a couple emotional states I was quick to pick up on in people, but predicting behavior was difficult. I more or less did it through observation, and evaluating probababilities based on what I'd seen before in similar situations or from the same person. And when I did become better at predicting, it didn't mean I understood the underlying motivations any better than I did before.
So I have a lot of questions about these neurons and, maybe more importantly, how they interact with other areas in the brain.
[ April 28, 2005, 12:48 PM: Message edited by: sndrake ]
Posted by A Rat Named Dog (Member # 699) on :
Maybe overactive mirror neurons are one reason I get so involved with fictional characters in movies ... particularly horror movies [shudder].
Posted by Olivetta (Member # 6456) on :
I don't 'do the Spock thing' NOW, but I think I did as a kid. I was probably five or six before I could connect the thing si felt to the the way other people acted. After that, I was very empathic.
I think, generally, they expect kids to understand that others feel pain and empathize with that at an earlier age than I did. Yet, I was always seen as a very compassionate child all through school. *shrug*
Posted by imenimok (Member # 7679) on :
Ok, I can't stand it anymore. What is "the Spock thing?"
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
From the article, linked in first post:
quote:Theory theory describes children as budding social scientists. The idea is that children collect evidence -- in the form of gestures and expressions -- and use their everyday understanding of people to develop theories that explain and predict the mental state of people they come in contact with.
Further down, this mode is labeled the "Vulcan Approach." We're less formal here, so we call it the "Spock Thing." Posted by starlooker (Member # 7495) on :
*is utterly FASCINATED*
I used to work with kids with autism, so it's fascinating from that perspective.
However, I'm more fascinated by other implications. Can one increase the way those neurons interact? Can they burn out? Might they be implicated in counselor burnout situations? (Or in why people decide to be shrinks in the first place?) Also, what plays into how people interpret those neuron firings... it often seems as though people who are abusive are plenty empathic enough to know just how to hurt another person. Are they more "vulcan" like? Or do they have those neurons, experience empathy, but for some other reason choose to exploit it?
*needs to reread the article*
Just a little more light shed on something we've all known about, at some level, for years.
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
I'm going to assume that the mirror neurons are not actually linked in some way; that seems unlikely. So what I'm wondering is how this is fundamentally different from the Spock approach, other than being less conscious. (Didn't really occur to me this morning until I had gone to bed.)'
As for my personal experience, I remember identifying with Spock almost from the time I started school; I thought of myself as a Vulcan stuck on Earth. Facial expressions have never been hard (except, sometimes, telling whether they are sincere), but I'm almost entirely unable to read body language. And recently I have suspected that I learned facial expressions from picture books; I began reading very early, and books for young children often show a face and say "Ben is happy" or something like that.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I think this is great. I would like to hear more of it, and I hope that their research continues.
I don't find it weird at all, but I don't swallow it whole either.....just because th theory sounds reasonable doesn't mean it is correct.
Kwea
Posted by Narnia (Member # 1071) on :
Holy cow, did anyone else watch TLC tonight? It's magic week and they've got every ESP, telepathic, mind-melding guy you can think of on there to amaze and confuse us.
And I was definitely amazed and confused. So cool!!!
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