3) Cognition and Development - Social Cognition - Mirror Neuron System

Question 1

What are mirror neurones?

Answer 1

Brain cells which fire in response to personal action and in response to action on the part of others.

Question 2

What did Gellese and Goldman suggest about mirror neurones?

Answer 2

• Mirror neurones respond to intentions behind behaviour as well as observed actions.
• This means that we do not interpret people’s actions with reference to our memory but we stimulate other’s actions in our motor system and experience their intentions using our mirror neurons.

Question 3

Explain mirror neurons in relation to perspective taking.

Answer 3

P - MN are important in other social-cognitive functions such as ToM and perspective taking.
E - If mirror neurones fire in response to other’s actions and intentions this may give us a neural mechanism for experiencing, and then understanding, other people’s perspectives and emotional states.
E - Just as we can stimulate intention by making judgements based on our own reflected motor responses, this same information may allow us to interpret what others are thinking and feeling.

Question 4

Explain mirror neurones in relation to human evolution.

Answer 4

• Ramachandran suggested that mirror neurons are so important that they have effectively shaped human evolution.
• Complex social interactions require a brain system that facilitates an understanding of intention, emotion and perspective.
• Without these cognitive abilities we could not live in the large groups with the complex social roles and rules that characterise human culture.
• He suggested that MN are absolutely key to understanding the way humans have developed as a social species.

Question 5

Explain mirror neurons in relation to ASD.

Answer 5

P - Ramachandran and Oberman have proposed the broken mirror theory of ASD.
E - This is the idea that neurological deficits including dysfunction in the mirror neuron system prevent a developing child imitating and understanding social behaviour in others.
This manifests itself in infancy when children later diagnosed with ASD typically mimic adult behaviour less than others.
E - Later, problems with the mirror neuron system lead to difficulties in social communication as children fail to develop the usual abilities to read intention and emotion of others.

Question 6

Give a strength of mirror neurons.

Answer 6

P - There is eveidence whihc supports the important role for mirror neurons in human social cognition.
E - Haker et al demonstrated that an area of the brain believed to be rich in mirror neurons is involved in contagious yawning which is widely seen as a simple example of human empathy, the ability to percieve mental states in others.
E - fMRI was used to assess brain actitivity in participants while theyw ere stimulated to yawn by showing them film of others yawning.
Considerable activity was shown when yawning in Brodmanm’s area 9, an area in the right frontal lobe believed to be rich in mirror neurons L - This supports the importance of mirror neurons in social cognition because they show that regions of the brain believed to be rich in mirror neurons activate when empathy or perspective-taking takes place.

Question 7

Give a limitation of mirror neurons.

Answer 7

P - It is difficult to study mirror neuron activity.
E - Although brain scans measure brain activity, they are unable to measure the activity of individual brain cells.
E - For ethical reasons it is also not possible to insert electrodes into the human brain to measure activity on a cellular level.
L - This is a limitation as a part of the brain, which is made of many cells, is being measured and results are inferred from this saying that the mirror neurons are active although he individual mirror neuron activity is not being measured.
Therefore there is a lack of direct evidence.