CLIC Speaker Abstracts

Marco Iacoboni (Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA): "Mirroring People: The Role of Mirror Neurons in Social Interactions.," December 5, 2007, 5 pm. Place: Haines Hall 332.

Single cell recordings in monkeys have demonstrated that motor neurons fire not only when a monkey performs goal-directed actions but also when the monkey observes the same actions performed by somebody else. These cells, called mirror neurons, have physiological properties that allow the simulation of the actions of other people in the brain of the observer. In humans, brain imaging studies have demonstrated a similar neural system, called the human mirror neuron system, which is critical for imitation and empathy. Empirical data also suggest that the activation of the human mirror neuron system is fairly automatic and that these cells are concerned more with the intention associated with observed action than with the action itself. The physiological properties of the mirror neuron system suggest that this neural system is a fundamental neurobiological mechanism for a pre-reflective form of intersubjectivity that may be a building block of social behavior.