It was a hot August day, Leonardo Fogassi, Vittorio Gallese, Giacomo Rizzolatti and their team were studying on neurons that specialized for the control of hand and mouth, at the University of Parma. Computers were recording signals which were coming from Macaque's brain. Macaque's every act was being record with electrodes and computers.
And suddenly an unexpected signal have changed neuroscience forever. Vittoria Gallese realized that while he was taking and eating grapes, signals were fired as same as signals which were being fired while Macaque takes and eats grapes by himself.
“I guess, mirror neurons will do same thing in physcology as DNA has done in biology”
Vilayanur Ramachandran
Same emprical datas were recieved during 90's in different laboratories, in different studies by different scientists. There were indeed neurons which were specialized for different missions in our and some other animal's brains. What was its meaning?
A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting.
From education to language, from mind theory to autism this discovery changed a lot of things.
The other interesting study which was held by Frans De Waal, Christian Keysers, Vittorio Gallese, Jean Decety and Stephanie Preston on relation between mirror neurons and emphaty. These scientists' studies have shown similar brain regions are active when people experience an emotion and when they see another person experiencing an emotion. Although these brain regions are not same as the ones which mirror hand actions and they can not be described in monkeys yet, Christian Keysers studys support their theory. People whose emphaty scores are high in self describing tests, have stronger activitions both in mirror system for hand actions.
