Andersen Lab Mirror Neurons - Participant Intention

In the early 1990s, researchers studying nonhuman primates discovered a population of brain cells they called "mirror neurons." These specialized brain cells fired when the animal performed an action and also when the animal observed another performing that same action.

The discovery of mirror neurons seemed to support the idea that we understand the actions of others by internally simulating them in our own minds. But if that were the case, how would anyone be able to imagine doing something they had never done themselves? How could anyone understand Superman flying, for example, when no human has ever been able to fly?

New research from Caltech researchers has found the first evidence for mirror-like behavior in individual human neurons and suggests that "mirroring" is context dependent and more intricate than previously believed.

This video shows participants who were asked to attempt the sliding, lifting, and rotating actions while being shown the animations of a different action than the one they were instructed to perform. The researchers found that the observed action was not encoded in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) or the motor cortex (MC), suggesting the brain can ignore or screen out visual information that is not relevant to the task. However, when participants performed the same task but were also asked to report what they had observed, making the observed action behaviorally relevant, neurons in the PPC encoded both the attempted and observed actions whereas those in the MC encoded only the attempted action.

The research was carried out in the laboratory of Richard Andersen, the James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience and Leadership Chair and director of the T&C Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center at the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech.

More info: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/first-findings-of-mirror-like-activity-in-individual-human-neurons