“Monkey see, Monkey do,” a common phrase referring to a learning process in which one sees something being done, and proceeds to do the same. Who would have known that this process is actually run by specific neurons in the brain, and has an immense impact in the way our lives are conducted throughout the lifespan. These neurons, termed mirror neurons, were first discovered in the brains of macaque monkeys by a neuroscientist, Giacomo Rizzolatti, and his colleagues in the early 1990s, in an experiment that placed electrodes in the movement areas of the brain, and recorded the neuron activation in the monkeys as they carried out certain actions, including grasping and retrieving objects. The researchers found that those neurons that fired while the monkeys performed the tasks were also fired when the monkeys viewed another subject completing the same tasks. This finding meant that mirror neurons might be responsible for the “how” and “why” systems of the dorsal stream of analysis, “if watching an action and performing that action can activate the same parts of the brain in monkeys…then it makes sense that watching an action and performing an action could also elicit the same feelings in people.” (1) These neurons are activated even in the event of imitation, which begins to explain the existence of them in humans, and their importance as a biological perspective in learning acquisition, and how we respond to certain actions, both emotionally and by sensations.
Although much mirror neuron research has been attempted on humans since their first finding in monkeys, it is has been close to impossible to study the exact single neurons responsible “because doing so requires attaching electrodes directly to the brain.”
(2) However, knowing the general concepts helps to understand why mirror neurons could be so imperative in the developing human brain. Their purpose is simple in that they make it possible for a developing child to imitate the actions at hand. This is...