Mirror Neurons

Introduction

A mirror neuron is a neuron that activate during specific situations, such as observations or when perceiving empathy and the neuron “mirrors” that action in the brain. These neurons have been mainly observed in humans also with some research with primates and birds. Mirror neurons are most commonly found the premotor cortex, the primary somatosensory cortex, and the inferior parietal cortex. These places are all crucial. There is little to no research supporting the use of mirror neurons in cognition and no computational research to support mirror neurons. Research involving mirror neurons is very important because they come into play every day of our lives. It is very important for our learning circuits and how we learn. Watching people practice whatever you are trying to get good at makes a massive difference because of watching how you want to play. When you watch you learn about those things better then if you were for example just reading about them. In this chapter I want to explore what mirror neurons are and why they are important to us. Also explore new research and other aspects around them.  

Historical Background

Mirror neurons were discovered by Giacomo Rizzolatti in the 1990s by a study where he placed electrodes in the ventral premotor cortex of a monkey to study neurons that control mouth and hand actions. They had the monkey reach for food. Later they had the monkey watch others reach for food which showed activation of a neuron which they explored upon. This exploration showed the mirror neuron and activation of it. Later they also published more papers about it and the mirror system which involves the neurons. The mirror system includes parts of the brain like: inferior posterior parietal cortex which plays a massive role in planned movements and spatial reasoning, superior temporal sulcus which is responsible for figuring out other people’s emotional states, and ventral premotor cortex which helps with decision making and working memory. In Hebbian learning and predictive mirror neurons for actions, sensations and emotions by Keysers, C., & Gazzola, V. 2014 they used a robot to perform an action and made a human copy that action they found that these robot actions still activates the mirror system as much as copying a human action. This system is very important for the mirror neurons because it causes them to work together with hebbian synapses which are synapses that get stronger the more you activate them to create finer motor movements in your body because of those repeated actions. There is little knowledge about this system because of how new it is and how it functions. This system is predominantly used for copying motor movements. The neurons were soon after very widely known and shown in other research which confirmed their existence. 

Neurobiological Basis

There are a few mechanisms of activation for your mirror system and mirror neurons. The most common being observation, self action, and empathy. These mechanisms of activation all are activated during many different circumstances. What makes the biggest difference between the different activations are what your body is doing. Observation and self action are opposites when it relates to what your body is doing. In self action your body is moving like others and what you have learned in the past to mirror. When you observe you are running through the motions of something without the bodily movement of it. When you watch people do something you know how to do or are learning your mirror system activates. This can then also activates our learning circuits in our brain. 

When we study mirror neurons we use fMRI and EEG mainly to study mirror neurons. These methods are both useful because they can observe brain activity along with action execution at the same time. When you can observe both you can begin to see the relation between the two factors when looking at mirror neurons. 

Functional Role of Mirror Neurons

Mirror neurons are activated are when we are watching someone else do a motor movement that we understand. For example, if you know how to play volleyball and you are watching some people play volleyball nearby, these neurons will activate and in your brain you will mimic the movements that are being done right before your eyes. Your brain will play out these movements and will run through them without you even thinking about it. This sadly doesn’t work for activities that you don’t know how to do, like if you don’t know how to knit and you watch someone else you wouldn’t be able to learn just like that. You have to understand the movements and be able to mirror them from what you are seeing. This is the most common activation of our mirror neurons and it’s exactly what you think of when you think of a mirror as copying what you see. These neurons can come in very useful throughout life because of these usages for them (Mazurek & Schieber, 2019). New research shows that mirror neurons also are activated during action execution. Mirror neurons could be at the forefront of action execution but more research must still be done.

This imitation is very useful in child development and skill acquisition because all you do is learn from others actions. When children are developing they imitate their parents behavior when learning things like behavior or speech. Children always inherit behavior from their parents because that is the environment that those children were raised in or exposed too. Children also acquire their skills with the mirror system because of the constant watching and learning from others movements. This causes a constant learning especially in children. They spend hours after hours of time just to imitate behaviors they see in their everyday life. 

Observational learning can be used in a bad way compared to the examples before. In the study “Mirror neurons fire up during mouse battles” by Kozlov, 2023 they found that when mice were observing violent behavior amongst other mice that made them more prone to copying behavior that was observed. The hypothalamus controls this observation because of mirror neurons acting upon it observing that behavior, changing their behavior to mimic the others around it. We can learn from this study that many of the things in our lives are strongly influenced by what we observe around others and who we interact with. If we are watching bad influences it will rub off because of you watching that behavior happen and being exposed to it. You then mirror it with the mirror neurons in your brain to then execute a similar behavior to others.

Mirror neurons also activate when empathy is being expressed in the body. This also causes the activation of the cingulate and insular cortices which are responsible for emotional and cognitive functions. in the brain, this is also connected to the mirror system. This empathy related activation is very unique because these mirror neurons help you bond with others and be able to empathize for others because of mirroring the behavior. 

Future Directions

Some new directions that the neuroscience field is taking right now with mirror neurons and the mirror system is things like; treatment of Parkinson’s, role in autism spectrum disorder, research of the unique neural circuitry, mirror therapy to promote motor system recovery, and many more (Patel 2024). Mirror neurons are a fairly new discovery with much to unravel about them. That makes them very exciting topics of research and something to keep in mind for the field of neuroscience in the coming years. 

Citations

Carrillo, M., Han, Y., Migliorati, F., Liu, M., Gazzola, V., & Keysers, C. (2019). Emotional mirror neurons in the Rat’s anterior cingulate cortex. Current Biology, 29(12), 2104-2104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.05.064

Keysers, C., & Gazzola, V. (2014). Hebbian learning and predictive mirror neurons for actions, sensations and emotions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences, 369(1644), 1-11.

Kozlov, M. (2023). ‘Mirror neurons’ fire up during mouse battles. Nature (London), 614(7949), 605-605. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00418-1

Lamm, C., & Majdandžić, J. (2015). The role of shared neural activations, mirror neurons, and morality in empathy – A critical comment. Neuroscience Research, 90, 15-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neures.2014.10.008

Mazurek, K. A., & Schieber, M. H. (2019). Mirror neurons precede non-mirror neurons during action execution. Journal of Neurophysiology, 122(6), 2630-2635. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00653.2019

Patel J. (2024). Advances in the Study of Mirror Neurons and Their Impact on Neuroscience: An Editorial. Cureus, 16(5), e61299. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.61299